| |
| A GOLD fringe on the purpling hem | |
| Of hills, the river runs, | |
| As down its long, green valleys falls | |
| The last of summer’s suns. | |
| Along its tawny gravel-bed, | 5 |
| Broad-flowing, swift, and still, | |
| As if its meadow levels felt | |
| The hurry of the hill, | |
| Noiseless between its banks of green, | |
| From curve to curve it slips: | 10 |
| The drowsy maple-shadows rest | |
| Like fingers on its lips. | |
| |
| A waif from Carroll’s wildest hills, | |
| Unstoried and unknown; | |
| The ursine legend of its name | 15 |
| Prowls on its banks alone. | |
| Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn | |
| As ever Yarrow knew, | |
| Or, under rainy Irish skies, | |
| By Spenser’s Mulla grew; | 20 |
| And through the gaps of leaning trees | |
| Its mountain-cradle shows,— | |
| The gold against the amethyst, | |
| The green against the rose. | |
| |
| Touched by a light that hath no name, | 25 |
| A glory never sung, | |
| Aloft on sky and mountain-wall | |
| Are God’s great pictures hung. | |
| How changed the summits vast and old! | |
| No longer granite-browed, | 30 |
| They melt in rosy mist; the rock | |
| Is softer than the cloud; | |
| The valley holds its breath; no leaf | |
| Of all its elms is twirled: | |
| The silence of eternity | 35 |
| Seems falling on the world. | |
| |
| The pause before the breaking seals | |
| Of mystery is this: | |
| Yon miracle-play of night and day | |
| Makes dumb its witnesses. | 40 |
| What unseen altar crowns the hills | |
| That reach up stair on stair? | |
| What eyes look through, what white wings fan | |
| These purple veils of air? | |
| What Presence from the heavenly heights | 45 |
| To those of earth stoops down? | |
| Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods | |
| On Ida’s snowy crown! | |
| |
| Slow fades the vision of the sky; | |
| The golden water pales; | 50 |
| And over all the valley-land | |
| A gray-winged vapor sails. | |
| I go the common way of all: | |
| The sunset-fires will burn, | |
| The flowers will blow, the river flow, | 55 |
| When I no more return. | |
| No whisper from the mountain-pine | |
| Nor lapsing stream shall tell | |
| The stranger, treading where I tread, | |
| Of him who loved them well. * * * * * | 60 |
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