Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/318

 312 HILL AND SHORE.

But oh ! in that solemn midnight, To find that the anchor cast

In the blood-bought promise held me To the blessed life-line fast !

That I had no swift accounting To do with a whirling brain,

Only kiss the hand outreaching, The palm with its crimson stain,

That in years agone had blest me, And covered my load of sin,

Which held not a rod to fright me But a beacon to light me in.

��HILL AND SHORE.

OH the hills ! the hills ! I am sick for the hills, With their warm brown sides so bare, Their circling arms, and their steady feet On the shadows slumbering there ;

With their reverent hands to the sky upraised As they pray on their carpets green,

Seeking evermore what the angels see In the Land still to us unseen.

A while this surge of the solemn sea,

And the moan of its deep unrest, And then I turn like a home-sick child,

Happy hills ! to your riven breast.

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