Two Moods from the Hill theme? I.
YOUTH

I Love to watch the world from here, for all
The numberless living portraits that are drawn
Upon the mind. Far over is the sea,
Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes,
5A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green,
With brackish gullies wandering in between,
All this from the hill.
And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars,
Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun
10A field of daisies wandering in the wind
As though a hidden serpent glided through,
A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then
The dusty road and the abodes of men
Surrounding the hill.
15How small the enclosure is wherein there lives
Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail
Dips in the limpid1 bosom of the sea,
From that far place to where in state the turf
Raises a throne for me upon the hill,
20Each little love of a living thing
Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring
And seen from the hill.

II.
AGE

Why did I build my cottage on a hill facing the sea?

Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope
25
Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope,

Surging and sweeping,

Laughing and leaping,

Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore,

Rustling the sands that know my step no more,
30
I should have found a valley, deep and still,

To shelter me.

There flows the river, and it seems asleep

So far away,

Yet I remember whip of wave and roar
35
Of wind that rose and smote2 against the oar,

Smote and retreated,

Proud but defeated,

While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine,

Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line
40
The great cod quivering from the deep

As counterplay.

What is the solace of these hills and vales

That rise and fall?

What is there glorious in the greenwood glen,
45
Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren?

Give me the gusty,

Raucous and rusty

Call of the seagull in the echoing sky,

The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die,
50
Give me the life that follows the bending sails,

Or none at all!