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(Excerpt)
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 | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
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| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
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| 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 | 25 |
| And, gay with buttercups and clover, | |
| The slopes of meadowy freshness make | |
| A green foil to the sparkling lake. | |
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| So is it with yon hills that swim | |
| Upon the horizon, blue and dim: | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| To kiss of lisping ripples lean. * * * * * | |
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