Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse

In the Heart of the Hills

Bliss Carman (1861–1929)

IN the warm blue heart of the hills

My beautiful, beautiful one

Sleeps where he laid him down

Before the journey was done.

All the long summer day

The ghosts of noon draw nigh,

And the tremulous aspens hear

The footing of winds go by.

Down to the gates of the sea,

Out of the gates of the west,

Journeys the whispering river

Before the place of his rest.

The road he loved to follow

When June came by his door,

Out through the dim blue haze

Leads, but allures no more.

The trailing shadows of clouds

Steal from the slopes and are gone;

The myriad life in the grass

Stirs, but he slumbers on;

The inland wandering tern

Skreel as they forage and fly;

His loons on the lonely reach

Utter their querulous cry;

Over the floating lilies

A dragon-fly tacks and steers;

Far in the depth of the blue

A martin settles and veers;

To every roadside thistle

A gold-brown butterfly clings;

But he no more companions

All the dear vagrant things.

The strong red journeying sun,

The pale and wandering rain,

Will roam on the hills forever

And find him never again.

Then twilight falls with the touch

Of a hand that soothes and stills,

And a swamp-robin sings into light

The lone white star of the hills.

Alone in the dusk he sings,

And a burden of sorrow and wrong

Is lifted up from the earth

And carried away in his song.

Alone in the dusk he sings,

And the joy of another day

Is folded in peace and borne

On the drift of years away.

But there in the heart of the hills

My beautiful weary one

Sleeps where he laid him down;

And the long sweet night is begun.