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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MOUNTAINS, by SARAH NORCLIFFE CLEGHORN Poet's Biography First Line: It's fenced all round with mountains where we live Last Line: Beyond the hollow, where I had a cousin . . . Subject(s): Mountains; Hills; Downs (great Britain) | |||
It's fenced all round with mountains where we live, "Like as Jerusalem," the Bible says; You know, "as round about Jerusalem." Some people feel the mountains "on their chests"; They feel them like forbidding walls, they say, That scant the winter days, and darken them. But that's not true; for winter afternoons Are pieced out by the long-drawn afterglow. Blaze Mountain must have got its name from that, Although it's not like firelight, but darker, More purpling; cooler. The artist that comes here Has never painted Blaze. His favorite Is Bald Fowl; but he doesn't call it Bald Fowl. He calls it Eagle Peak, or Lair of the Winds. "Lair of the Winds by Moonlight" was one picture. Blueberry Mountain, Blaze, and Catamount Are all more suitable, I think, to paint; They're closer wooded, and a rounder shape. Or Windward Mountain; for it has a rock, A kind of castle cliff, that strangers take For a hotel, sometimes. On Blueberry There is a pond, where Daniel Webster came And made a speech, some eighty years ago; And all the villages, for miles around, Went up with toy log-cabins and hard cider Free for all comers. Strangers always say We ought to mark the spot; but it's well known. The one I like the best is Pioneer, Chiefly, I guess, because I used to live Over the saddle of it, in a town So little, and so backward, it's gone out Like damp leaves in a bonfire. And our house, Our square one-chimneyed house, our sagging barn, Our lilacs, locusts, and great wineglass elm -- The deer stray all over the old place now. I saw a young fawn in the schoolhouse door, And I was half afraid the timbers might Fall in and break its pretty, fragile spine. I frightened it away, and it ran down Right over where we used to keep our bees, And made me think of the last night my brother Julius . . . my youngest brother . . . was alive. -- But that was years and years and years ago. That long blue mountain, Lebanon, on the west, Has always seemed to me a fairy place, Largely, I take it, from its Bible name: "Cedars of Lebanon"; I used to think There must be cedars on the other side, For I could see the kind of woods on this side; Maples and birches -- white and yellow birches, Hemlock and spruce and patches of dark pine. But there was more than cedars calling me To Lebanon; a village over there Beyond the Hollow, where I had a cousin . . . | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CALIFORNIA SORROW: MOUNTAIN VIEW by MARY KINZIE CONTRA MORTEM: THE MOUNTAIN FASTNESS by HAYDEN CARRUTH GREEN MOUNTAIN IDYL by HAYDEN CARRUTH IF IT WERE NOT FOR YOU by HAYDEN CARRUTH COMRADE JESUS by SARAH NORCLIFFE CLEGHORN |
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