Among the Hills by Francis Sherman — Read

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 untrammelled 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.