Ladywood, 1912. (To E. De S.)

To the high hills you took me, where desire,Daughter of difficult life, forgets her lures,And hope’s eternal tasks no longer tire,And only peace endures.Where anxious prayer becomes a worthless thingSubdued by muted praise,And asking nought of God and life we bringThe conflict of long daysInto a moment of immortal poiseAmong the scars and proud unbuilded spires,Where, seeking not the triumphs and the joysSo treasured in the world, we kindle firesThat shall not burn to ash, and are contentTo read anew the eternal argument.

Nothing of man’s intolerance we knowHere, far from man, among the fortressed hills,Nor of his querulous hopes.To what may we attain? What matter, soWe feel the unwearied virtue that fulfilsThese cloudy crests and rifts and heathered slopesWith life that is and seeks not to attain,For ever spends nor ever asks again?

To the high hills you took me. And we sawThe everlasting ritual of skyAnd earth and the waste places of the air,And momently the change of changeless lawWas beautiful before us, and the cryOf the great winds was as a distant prayerFrom a massed people, and the choric soundOf many waters moaning down the longVeins of the hills was as an undersong;And in that hour we moved on holy ground.

To the high hills you took me. Far belowLay pool and tarn locked up in shadowy sleep;Above we watched the clouds unhasting goFrom hidden crest to crest; the neighbour sheepCropped at our side, and swift on darkling wingsThe hawks went sailing down the valley wind,The rock-bird chattered shrilly to its kind;And all these common things were holy things.

From ghostly Skiddaw came the wind in flight.By Langdale Pikes to Coniston’s broad brow,From Coniston to proud Helvellyn’s height,The eloquent wind, the wind that even nowWhispers again its story gathered inFor seasons of much traffic in the waysWhere men so straitly spinThe garment of unfathomable days.

To the high hills you took me. And we turnedOur feet again towards the friendly vale,And passed the banks whereon the bracken burnedAnd the last foxglove bells were spent and pale,Down to a hallowed spot of English landWhere Rotha dreams its way from mere to mere,Where one with undistracted vision scannedLife’s far horizons, he who sifted clearDust from the grain of being, making songMemorial of simple men and mindsNot bowed to cunning by deliberate wrong,And conversed with the spirit of the winds,And knew the guarded secrets that were sealedIn pool and pine, petal and vagrant wing,Throning the shepherd folding from the field,Robing anew the daffodils of spring.

We crossed the threshold of his home and stoodBeside his cottage hearth where once was toldThe day’s adventure drawn from fell and wood,And wisdom’s words and love’s were manifold,Where, in the twilight, gossip poets metTo read again their peers of older time,And quiet eyes of gracious women setA bounty to the glamour of the rhyme.

There is a wonder in a simple wordThat reinhabits fond and ghostly ways,And when within the poet’s walls we heardOne white with ninety years recall the daysWhen he upon his mountain paths was seen,We answered her strange bidding and were madeOne with the reverend presence who had beenSteward of kingly charges unbetrayed.

And to the little garden-close we went,Where he at eventide was wont to passTo watch the willing day’s last sacrament,And the cool shadows thrown along the grass,To read again the legends of the flowers,Lighten with song th’ obscure heroic plan,To contemplate the process of the hours,And think on that old story which is man.The lichened apple-boughs that once had spentTheir blossoms at his feet, in twisted ageYet knew the wind, and the familiar scentOf heath and fern made sweet his hermitage.And, moving so beneath his cottage-eaves,His song upon our lips, his life a star,A sign, a storied peace among the leaves,Was he not with us then? He was not far.

To the high hills you took me. We had seenMuch marvellous traffic in the cloudy ways,Had laughed with the white waters and the green,Had praised and heard the choric chant of praise,Communed anew with the undying dead,Resung old songs, retold old fabulous things,And, stripped of pride, had lost the world and ledA world refashioned as unconquered kings.

And the good day was done, and there againWhere in your home of quietness we stood,Far from the sight and sound of travelling men,And watched the twilight climb from Lady-woodAbove the pines, above the visible streams,Beyond the hidden sources of the rills,Bearing the season of uncharted dreamsInto the silent fastness of the hills.

Peace on the hills, and in the valleys peace;And Rotha’s moaning music sounding clear;The passing-song of wearied winds that cease,Moving among the reeds of Rydal Mere;The distant gloom of boughs that still unscarredBeside their poet’s grave due vigil keep--With us were these, till night was throned and starredAnd bade us to the benison of sleep.