O SILENT hills across the lake, Asleep in moonlight, or awake To catch the color of the sky, That sifts through every cloud swept by, -- How beautiful ye are, in change Of sultry haze and storm-light strange; How dream-like rest ye on the bar That parts the billow from the star; How blend your mists with waters clear, Till earth floats off, and heaven seems near. Ye faint and fade, a pearly zone, The coast-line of a land unknown. Yet that is sunburnt Ossipee, Plunged knee-deep in the limpid sea: Somewhere among these grouping isles, Old White-Face from his cloud-cap smiles, And gray Chocorua bends his crown, To look on happy hamlets down; And every pass and mountain-slope Leads out and on some human hope. Here the great hollows of the hills The glamour of the June day fills. Along the climbing path the brier, In rose-bloom beauty beckoning higher, Breathes sweetly the warm uplands over And, gay with buttercups and clover, The slopes of meadowy freshness make A green foil to the sparkling lake. So is it with you hills that swim Upon the horizon, blue and dim: For all the summer is not ours; On other shores familiar flowers Find blossoming as fresh as these, In shade and shine and eddying breeze; And scented slopes as cool and green, To kiss of lisping ripples lean. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON AN INFANT WHICH DIED BEFORE BAPTISM by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE DUNS SCOTUS'S OXFORD by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS THE SERGEANT'S WEDDIN' by RUDYARD KIPLING THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY |