Two Twilights

<SPAN name="chap072"></SPAN> <h3> THE UPLAND </h3> <p class="poem"> We often go a-driving across the pleasant land,<br/> In summer through the pine woods dark, or by the ocean strand;<br/> But when the orchards blossom, and when the apples fall,<br/> We seek the high hill country that props the mountain wall.<br/></p> <p class="poem"> Old farms with mossed stone fences, old grassy roads that wind<br/> Forever on and upward to higher fields behind,<br/> By ancient bush-grown pastures, bestrewn with boulders gray,<br/> And lonely meadow slopes that bear thin crops of upland hay.<br/></p> <p class="poem"> As, terrace over terrace, we climb the mountain stair,<br/> More solitary grow the ways, more wild the farms and rare,<br/> And slenderer in their rocky beds the singing brooks that go<br/> Down-slipping to the valley stream a thousand feet below.<br/></p> <p class="poem"> Above us and above us still the grim escarpments rise,<br/> Till homeward we must turn at last, or ere the daylight dies,<br/> And leave unscaled the summit height, the even ridge o'erhead,<br/> Where smolder through the cedar screen the sunset embers red.<br/></p> <p class="poem"> What should we see, if once we won on that top step to stand?<br/> A wondrous valley world beyond? A far-stretched tableland?<br/> Almost it seems as though there lay the threshold of the sky,<br/> And that the foot which crossed that sill would enter Heaven thereby.<br/></p> <p class="poem"> And when, dear heart, the years have left us once again alone,<br/> And from our empty nest the broods have scattered forth and flown,<br/> Shall we not have the old horse round and take the well-known track<br/> Into the high hill country, and never more come back?<br/></p> <br/><br/><br/> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />