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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Green Mountains

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

New England: Green Mountains, Vt.

The Green Mountains

By James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

YE mountains, that far off lift up your heads,

Seen dimly through their canopies of blue,

The shade of my unrestful spirit sheds

Distance-created beauty over you;

I am not well content with this far view;

How may I know what foot of loved one treads

Your rocks moss-grown and sun-dried torrent beds?

We should love all things better, if we knew

What claims the meanest have upon our hearts;

Perchance even now some eye, that would be bright

To meet my own, looks on your mist-robed forms;

Perchance your grandeur a deep joy imparts

To souls that have encircled mine with light,—

O brother-heart, with thee my spirit warms!