In the High Hills / Maxwell Struthers Burt

In the High Hills

God has lent the wind to you.
Swept the great sweet mind of you
Keen and clean and splendid as the noon on peaks agleam.
Peace of sunny, hidden hollows
Down whose slope the long light follows,
And the hush is musical with dripping mountain stream.

God has lent his coolness, too;
Wet green woods and bramble-dew;
Scent of quivering aspen leaves still joyous from the rain;
Ah, if one were burned with sorrow,
Sleep would come until to-morrow
From a dream of cool fine hands to bless with peace the pain.

Noon among the high white hills;
Evening where the forest thrills,
Magical with moonlight, the scented ambient hush:
Things like these are part of you.
Soul and mind and heart of you:
Winds and storms and sunny days and sparkling, dawn-wet brush.

~~
Maxwell Struthers Burt (1882-1954)
from In the High Hills, 1914

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Maxwell Struthers Burt biography