GIVE me all mountains. City, town, the precinct of temple the crowded town gate, I have no love for: Walls must crush or hide whether of market palace court or precinct. Give me the stream's cold path, the grove of pine, for garden terrace the unclaimed bleak wild stretches of the mountain side. Give me no earth Crushed flat with cruel layer of fitted square or meted length, but boulders unhewn but set apart as secret altars, high in the loveliest alder grove or poplar. Give me for altar fire the wild azalea; let Phoebos keep the fervid market place. Marble of islands, snow of distant points, threatened with wave of pine, with wash of alder, my islands shift and change, now here now there, dazzling, white, granite, silver in blue ether. I swim who tread the mountain path as air. Let Phoebos keep the market, let white Love claim all the islands of sea-port or river; would I contend with these? Nay, I would rather pity him, my brother, pity white, passionless Love Who only knows the prompting of the restless, thwarted seas, shivering in porches from the bitter air. Ah Zeus, ennoble, care for these thy children, but give me the islands of the upper air, all mountains and the towering mountain trees. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DREAMS by CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK by THOMAS HARDY PARADISE LOST: BOOK 1 by JOHN MILTON TO THE HONOURABLE AND VIRTUOUS LADY, THE LADY TASBURGH by WILLIAM BASSE THE POWER OF WOMEN by MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS |