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