Explore "The Heavenly Hills of Holland (Interludes in Holland)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The heavenly hills of Holland, -- / How wondrously they rise / Above the smooth green pastures / Into the azure skies!
With blue and purple hollows, / With peaks of dazzling snow, / Along the far horizon / The clouds are marching slow.
No mortal foot has trodden / The summits of that range, / Nor walked those mystic valleys / Whose colours ever change; / Yet we possess their beauty, / And visit them in dreams, / While ruddy gold of sunset / From cliff and canyon gleams.
In days of cloudless weather / They melt into the light; / When fog and mist surround us / They're hidden from our sight; / But when returns a season / Clear shining after rain, / While the northwest wind is blowing, / We see the hills again.
The old Dutch painters loved them, / Their pictures show them fair, -- / Old Hobbema and Ruysdael, / Van Goyen and Vermeer.
Above the level landscape, / Rich polders, long-armed mills, / Canals and ancient cities, -- / Float Holland's heavenly hills.
The Hague, November, 1916.