A little hill among New Hampshire hills

Touches more stars than any height I know.

For there the whole earth—like a single being—fills

And expands with heaven.

It is the hill where Celia used to go

To watch Monadnock and the miles that met

In slow-ascending slopes of peace.

She said: “When I am here, I find release

From every petty debt I owe,

The goods I bring with me increase,

The ills are riven

And blown away. And there remains a single debt

Toward all the world for me,

A single duty and one destiny.”

“There shall be many births of God

In this humanity,”

She said, “and many crucifixions on the hills,

Before we learn that where Christ trodWe all shall tread; and as he died to give

Himself to us, we too shall die—and live.”

“Though slowly knowledge comes, yet in the birth

Is joy,” said Celia, “joy

As well as pain:

The clear and clouded beauty of the earth.

.... This I forget in cities. For cities are a great

Impassable gate

Of tumult. But by mountains and by seas I gain

Path after path of peace.”

One evening Celia led me, late,

Among the many whispers before rain,

To touch and climb her hill again.

I felt it rise invisible as fate,

Not for the eye but for the soul to see.

And when at last, among the oaks, we came

Upon the top, a perfect voice

Thrilled in the air like flame—

Was it uprisen death we heard?

Was it immortal youth,

Out of the body, witnessing the truth,

Attesting glory in an angel’s voice?Blindly we listened to the singer and the single strain

Containing joy.

And then the voice was still and all the world and we—

Till “Run,” she said, “and bring him back to me!”

I ran, I called ... but in the nearing rain,

No mortal answered, nothing stirred.

Was it uprisen death we heard?

.... Perhaps the hills and night

Had made a prophet of some wandering boy,

Prompting him in that instant to rejoice

As never in his life before.

He must have had his own delight

As well in silence as in song;

For, though we waited long,

He sang no more.

Afterward Celia said: “That voice we heard

Singing among the oak-leaves, and then still,

We cannot answer how it sings or how it comes and goes....

But only that its beauty ever growsWithin us both, in ways no voice has told.

.... So let me be to you. When night has drawn its fold

Of darkness and no word

May reach your heart from mine,

Take then my love, my beauty! Hear me still

When you are old

And I am ageless as a changing hill!

O hear me like that voice at night,

Clearer than sound, nearer than sight,

And let me be—as beauty is—divine!”

There is a hill of hills

That holds my heart on high and stills

All other sound

Than joy.

Robins and thrushes, whip-poor-wills

And morning-sparrows sing it round

With echoes. Waterfalls abound

And many streams convoy

The breath of music. I have found

A hill-path rising sudden on a city-street,

Out of a quarrel, out of black despair,

And climbed it with my winged feet.

It hurries me aboveAll this illusion, all these ills,

It rises quickly to the shining air.

.... Celia, I hear you on the hill of hills,

Announcing love.

And O my citizen, perhaps the few

Whom I shall tell of you

Will see with me your beauty who are dead,

Will hear with me your voice and what it said!

Let but a line of mine,

A single one,

Be made to shine

With your whole-heartedness as with the sun,

And I shall so consign

Your touch to younger and yet younger hands,

That they shall carry beauty through more lands

Than ever Helen laid her touch upon.

In your new world I see

The immigrants arriving from the ships....

O Celia, my democracy,

My destiny,

Beauty has had its answer on your lips!