Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

When little kings, whose race was run
A little while ago,
Had little thrones to sit upon,
And little else to do,
Within a little town, remote
From Europe's larger scenes,
There dwelt a man of little,
Who lived on little means.

2.

A man, he was, of humble birth and mind,
His life was lowly, small was his estate.
Yet was there ever a human life confined
In bounds so narrow by ungenerous fate,
But it had in it something far and strange?
This man, from youth to age, had lived and grown
In a great longing for a far blue range
Of hills that hover'd o'er his native town.
Ne'er had his footsteps climb'd those mountains blue,
But half his life, and all his thoughts, dwelt there.
He was a man beyond himself. They drew
His being out of him, and made it fair.
For wheresoe'er his gaze around him roved,
There were those beautiful blue hills. And he,
Who lived, not in himself, but them, so loved
And so revered them, that they ceased to be
To him mere hills, mere human feet may wend.
Their azure summits, to his longing view,
Were features of a dear, though distant friend,
In kingly coronal and mantle blue.

3.

And “Oh,” he mused, “full sure am I
Those mountains feel, in silent joy,
The love my gaze doth give them. They
Seek it, indeed, with signs all day;

Down drawing o'er their shoulders fair,
This way and that, soft veils of air,
And colours, never twice the same,
Woven of wind, and dew, and flame,
And strange cloud-shadows, and slant showers.

“That is their speech. 'Tis unlike ours,
Easy to learn, tho', if one tries;
One only has to use his eyes.
The colours are the vowels. These
Are liquid links whose mobile ease
Such fluent combination grants
To those substantial consonants,
Precipitous crags, and sudden peaks.
The accents are the lightning-streaks
And thunder-claps, that render, each,
Such emphasis to mountain speech.
Next follow fog and mist, which are
Verbs we may call irregular;
Perplexing when at first you view them,
But persevere, and you'll get thro' them.
Then comes the rain, which just supplies
The necessary quantities
Of notes of admiration. Far
Too many, folks may think they are.
But if such folks could understand
The mountains, there on every hand
They'd find about them more, far more,
Than notes of admiration, score

On score, suffice for. Think, what lands
And peoples every peak commands!
Then find the statesman that knows how
To govern one land. As for two,
That task's beyond the best, we feel.
Now, had we, like the hills, to deal
With winds, and storms, and clouds, and snows,
Nor lose our dignified repose,
Who'd wonder why the hills abound
In thoughts so serious, so profound,
About what men, when met together,
Talk, without thinking, of—the weather?
But still to talk it is men's wont,
Both when they think and when they don't.
Ah, good old hills! If Majesty
Should, some day hence, be forced to fly
From all her other thrones on earth,
'Tis there, with you, who gave her birth,
That she her latest home would find,
Above, but still among, mankind!”