Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/335

 AGATHA.

OME with me to the mountain, not where rocks

Soar harsh above the troops of hurrying pines,

But where the earth spreads soft and rounded breasts

To feed her children; where the generous hills

Lift a green isle betwixt the sky and plain

To keep some Old World things aloof from change.

Here too 't is hill and hollow: new-born streams.

With sweet enforcement, joyously compelled

Like laughing children, hurry down the steeps,

And make a dimpled chase athwart the stones;

Pine woods are black upon the heights, the slopes

Are green with pasture, and the bearded corn

Fringes the blue above the sudden ridge:

A little world whose round horizon cuts

This isle of hills with heaven for a sea,

Save in clear moments when southwestward gleams

France by the Rhine, melting anon to haze.

The monks of old chose here their still retreat,.

And called it by the Blessed Virgin's name,

Sancta Maria, which the peasant's tongue,

Speaking from out the parent's heart that turns

All loved things into little things, has made

Sanct Märgen—Holy little Mary, dear

As all the sweet home things she smiles upon,

The children and the cows, the apple-trees,

The cart, the plough, all named with that caress

Which feigns them little, easy to be held,

Familiar to the eyes and hand and heart.

What though a Queen? She puts her crown away