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 thing
Subdued by muted praise,
And asking nought of God and life we bring
The conflict of long days
Into a moment of immortal poise
Among the scars and proud unbuilded spires,
Where, seeking not the triumphs and the joys
So treasured in the world, we kindle fires
That shall not burn to ash, and are content
To read anew the eternal argument.
Nothing of man’s intolerance we know
Here, far from man, among the fortressed hills,
Nor of his querulous hopes.
To what may we attain? What matter, so
We feel the unwearied virtue that fulfils
These cloudy crests and rifts and heathered slopes
With life that is and seeks not to attain,
For ever spends nor ever asks again?{62}
To the high hills you took me. And we saw
The everlasting ritual of sky
And earth and the waste places of the air,
And momently the change of changeless law
Was beautiful before us, and the cry
Of the great winds was as a distant prayer
From a massed people, and the choric sound
Of many waters moaning down the long
Veins of the hills was as an undersong;
And in that hour we moved on holy ground.
To the high hills you took me. Far below
Lay pool and tarn locked up in shadowy sleep;
Above we watched the clouds unhasting go
From hidden crest to crest; the neighbour sheep
Cropped at our side, and swift on darkling wings
The 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 now
Whispers again its story gathered in
For seasons of much traffic in the ways
Where men so straitly spin
The garment of unfathomable days.{63}
To the high hills you took me. And we turned
Our feet again towards the friendly vale,
And passed the banks whereon the bracken burned
And the last foxglove bells were spent and pale,
Down to a hallowed spot of English land
Where Rotha dreams its way from mere to mere,
Where one with undistracted vision scanned
Life’s far horizons, he who sifted clear
Dust from the grain of being, making song
Memorial of simple men and minds
Not bowed to cunning by deliberate wrong,
And conversed with the spirit of the winds,
And knew the guarded secrets that were sealed
In 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 stood
Beside his cottage hearth where once was told
The day’s adventure drawn from fell and wood,
And wisdom’s words and love’s were manifold,
Where, in the twilight, gossip poets met
To read again their peers of older time,
And quiet eyes of gracious women set
A bounty to the glamour of the rhyme.
There is a wonder in a simple word
That reinhabits fond and ghostly ways,{64}
And when within the poet’s walls we heard
One white with ninety years recall the days
When he upon his mountain paths was seen,
We answered her strange bidding and were made
One with the reverend presence who had been
Steward of kingly charges unbetrayed.
And to the little garden-close we went,
Where he at eventide was wont to pass
To 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 spent
Their blossoms at his feet, in twisted age
Yet knew the wind, and the familiar scent
Of 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 seen
Much marvellous traffic in the cloudy ways,
Had laughed with the white waters and the green,
Had praised and heard the choric chant of praise,{65}
Communed anew with the undying dead,
Resung old songs, retold old fabulous things,
And, stripped of pride, had lost the world and led
A world refashioned as unconquered kings.
And the good day was done, and there again
Where in your home of quietness we stood,
Far from the sight and sound of travelling men,
And watched the twilight climb from Lady-wood
Above the pines, above the visible streams,
Beyond the hidden sources of the rills,
Bearing the season of uncharted dreams
Into 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 unscarred
Beside their poet’s grave due vigil keep—
With us were these, till night was throned and starred
And bade us to the benison of sleep.
![[Image not available: John Drinkwater portrait From a drawing by William Rothenstein 1917 Emery Walker ph. sc.]](images/frontispiece.jpg)
