Blaze the mountains in the windless autumn
Frost-clear, blue-nooned, apple-ripening days;
Faintly fragrant in the farther valleys
Smoke of many bonfires swells the haze;
Fair-bound cattle
Plod with lowing up the meadowy ways.

Roaring snows down-sweeping from the uplands
Bury the still valleys, drift them deep.
Low along the mountain, lake-blue shadows,
Sea-blue shadows in the hollows sleep.
High above them
Blinding crystal is the sunlit steep.




HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN


By orange grove and palm-tree, we walked the southern shore,
Each day more still and golden than was the day before.
That calm and languid sunshine! How faint it made us grow
To look on Hemlock Mountain when the storm hangs low!

To see its rocky pastures, its sparse but hardy corn,
The mist roll off its forehead before a harvest morn;
To hear the pine-trees crashing across its gulfs of snow
Upon a roaring midnight when the whirlwinds blow.