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...THE BEAUTIFUL by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES WAPENTAKE; TO ALFRED TENNYSON by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW TO HELEN (1) by EDGAR ALLAN POE THE CLOSING SCENE by THOMAS BUCHANAN READ A TEAMSTER'S FAREWELL by CARL SANDBURG RONDEL by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, ESQ., ON SEEING HIS PICTURE ... by MATTHEW ARNOLD |