Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/160

 ON THE GORGEOUS HILLS OF MORNING

On the gorgeous hills of morning

A sudden piping of birds,

A piping of all the forest, high and merry and clear,

I lay in my tent and listened;

I lay and heard them long,

In the dark of the moonlit morning,

The birds of the night at song.

I lay and listened and heard them

Sing ere the day was begun;

Sing and sink into

Silence one by one.

I lay in my bed and looked—

Paler than starlight or lightning

A glimmer ...

In the highlands in the country places

Where the old plain men have rosy faces,

And the young fair lasses

Quiet eyes,

Light and heat begin, begin and strengthen,

And the shadows turn and shrink and lengthen,

As the great sun passes in the skies. [ 135 ]