A Summer Pilgrimage

To kneel before some saintly shrine,     To breathe the health of airs divine,     Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,     The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.     I too, a palmer, take, as they     With staff and scallop-shell, my way     To feel, from burdening cares and ills,     The strong uplifting of the hills.     The years are many since, at first,     For dreamed-of wonders all athirst,     I saw on Winnipesaukee fall     The shadow of the mountain wall.     Ah! where are they who sailed with me     The beautiful island-studded sea?     And am I he whose keen surprise     Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?     Still, when the sun of summer burns,     My longing for the hills returns;     And northward, leaving at my back     The warm vale of the Merrimac,     I go to meet the winds of morn,     Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born,     Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy     The hunger of a lowland eye.     Again I see the day decline     Along a ridged horizon line;     Touching the hill-tops, as a nun     Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun.     One lake lies golden, which shall soon     Be silver in the rising moon;     And one, the crimson of the skies     And mountain purple multiplies.     With the untroubled quiet blends     The distance-softened voice of friends;     The girls light laugh no discord brings     To the low song the pine-tree sings;     And, not unwelcome, comes the hail     Of boyhood from his nearing sail.     The human presence breaks no spell,     And sunset still is miracle!     Calm as the hour, methinks I feel     A sense of worship oer me steal;     Not that of satyr-charming Pan,     No cult of Nature shaming man,     Not Beautys self, but that which lives     And shines through all the veils it weaves,     Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood,     Their witness to the Eternal Good!     And if, by fond illusion, here     The earth to heaven seems drawing near,     And yon outlying range invites     To other and serener heights,     Scarce hid behind its topmost swell,     The shining Mounts Delectable     A dream may hint of truth no less     Than the sharp light of wakefulness.     As through her vale of incense smoke.     Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke,     More than her heathen oracle,     May not this trance of sunset tell     That Natures forms of loveliness     Their heavenly archetypes confess,     Fashioned like Israels ark alone     From patterns in the Mount made known?     A holier beauty overbroods     These fair and faint similitudes;     Yet not unblest is he who sees     Shadows of Gods realities,     And knows beyond this masquerade     Of shape and color, light and shade,     And dawn and set, and wax and wane,     Eternal verities remain.     O gems of sapphire, granite set!     O hills that charmed horizons fret     I know how fair your morns can break,     In rosy light on isle and lake;     How over wooded slopes can run     The noonday play of cloud and sun,     And evening droop her oriflamme     Of gold and red in still Asquam.     The summer moons may round again,     And careless feet these hills profane;     These sunsets waste on vacant eyes     The lavish splendor of the skies;     Fashion and folly, misplaced here,     Sigh for their natural atmosphere,     And travelled pride the outlook scorn     Of lesser heights than Matterhorn.     But let me dream that hill and sky     Of unseen beauty prophesy;     And in these tinted lakes behold     The trailing of the raiment fold     Of that which, still eluding gaze,     Allures to upward-tending ways,     Whose footprints make, wherever found,     Our common earth a holy ground.