Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Glad was our friend, when himself he found,
In travelling trim, to the mountains bound!
The way was long, and the road was steep,
And, before he had got to his journey's end,
The night was dark, and the hills asleep.
“Aha!” thought he, “will they know their friend,
Who is here at last? Too late to-night

To see them, of course! They are sleeping now.
But to-morrow, to-morrow at earliest light,
I shall arise ere the red cock crow,
And visit mine old friends, every one.”

2.

So, at dawn, he arose with the rising sun,
And forth, as blithe as a bird, went he.
At first he was puzzled and pain'd, to find
All round him a field which appear'd to be
Just like the fields he had left behind:
A little meadow of grass, hemm'd round
With many a little hillock and mound,
Which hinder'd his sight from ranging far.
“But soon are these small hills climb'd,” he thought,
“And behind them, doubtless, the blue ones are,
Where, sportively hiding, they wish to be caught.”

3.

Then he mounted the hillocks that rose close by,
And thence, indeed, he beheld once more
The old blue hills. But they were not nigh;
They were far, far, far away, as before.

4.

“Strange!” he mused, “yet I travell'd all day,
Ay, and more than the half o' the night, too, post!
And all my life I have heard folks say
That the blue hills are but a day, at most,

From my native town. Did they err, I wonder?”
Then, he ask'd of a traveller passing by,
“Pray, sir, what is that country yonder?
There, where the hills are so blue and high.”
And, when the traveller had told him the name
Of the place where the blue hills now were seen,
Alas, poor man! 'twas the very same
Where, till then, he had all his life long been:
The country about his native town—
His birthplace—whence he had just been banish'd.
The blue hills there he had never known,
And the blue hills here, which he loved, had vanish'd.