Among The Hills

Far off, to eastward, I see the wide hill sloping
Up to the place where the pines and sky are one;
All the hill is gray with its young budding birches
And red with its maple-tips and yellow with the sun.

Sometimes, over it rolls a purple shadow

Of a ragged cloud that wanders in the large, open sky,
Born where the ploughed fields border on the river
And melting into space where the pines are black and high.

There all is quiet; but here where I am waiting,
Among the firs behind me the wind is ill at ease;


The crows, too, proclaim their old, incessant trouble,—
I think there is some battle raging in the surging trees.

And yet, should I go down beside the swollen river
Where the vagrant timber hurries to the wide untrammeled sea,
With the mind and the will to cross the new-born waters


And to let the yellow hillside share its peace with me,

—I know, then, that surely would come the old spring-fever
And touch my sluggish blood with its old eternal fire;
Till for me, too, the love of peace were over and forgotten,
And the freedom of the logs had become my soul’s desire.

To Doctor John Donne

Those grave old men—and women, too—
Who thronged St. Paul’s in your dear times,
I wonder what they thought of you
When they remembered your strange rhymes.

Did they forgive you for them then


(Because you preached so very well)
Putting them by and turn again
To hear your words of heaven and hell?

Or did they pause, seeing you there,
And say, “How can this man have grace?


Today, I worship otherwhere!”
And straightway seek some holier place?

(For so most men would do today
If from their pulpit you leaned down.
Yea, they would find the quickest way


To tell the scandal to the town.

How full it must have been of sin—
Your heart—had it but played with verse.
But you must tell your loves therein—
Alas! could anything be worse?)



And yet, among your ancient folk,
I think there must have been a few
Who learned at last to bear Love’s yoke
More patiently because of you.

I sit and see across the years


Some maiden kneeling in the aisle,
Contented now; all gone her tears
That you have changed into a smile:

Some lone poor man made rich again:
Some faded woman, with gray hair,


Forgetting most of her old pain:
Some grave-eyed poet, surer there.

O dim, hushed aisles of long ago,
Have ye no messages to tell?
We wonder, and are fain to know


The secret ye have kept so well.

And though we kneel with open eyes
Among your shadowy ghosts today,
Not one of us grows strong, or wise,
Nor find we comfort when we pray.



But they! how glad they seem who sit
And hear the voice we cannot hear.
Quietly they remember it—
The unknown thing we hold so dear.

Their faces fade with the low sun….


What wonder were they dreaming of?
Surely, it cannot be, John Donne,
They think that you were wise to love?