You who were nursed on the heights,
Hill-bred, lover of skies,

Though your love and your hope and your heart, Though your trust be hurt till it dies:

This will you know above other men,

In the hills you will find your faith again.

You who are brave from the winds,

Hill-bred, lover of winds,

Though the God whom you know seems dim,
Seems lost in a mist that blinds:

This will you know above other men,
In the hills you will find your God again.

THE BROOK

BY ALFRED TENNYSON

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges;
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret,

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel,

With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom. I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses.

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

From THE DEEP

BY GLADYS CROMWELL

Where floating shapes of stars and leaves

Are free to dwell,

And feel the quietude of Life's

Eternal spell.

I must have peace, and so in some

Dark peace I trust,

Where thoughts like stars and leafage can Be spun from dust.

MY GARDEN

BY THOMAS EDWARD BROWN

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fern'd grot―.

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not-

Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;

'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

COUPLET

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Great things are done when men and mountains meet; These are not done by jostling in the street.

VOICES 1

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

All day with anxious heart and wondering ear
I listened to the city; heard the ground
Echo with human thunder, and the sound
Go reeling down the streets and disappear.
The headlong hours, in their wild career,
Shouted and sang until the world was drowned
With babel-voices, each one more profound. . . .
All day it surged-but nothing could I hear.

That night the country never seemed so still;

The trees and grasses spoke without a word

1 From "Challenge" by Louis Untermeyer, by permission of Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., holders of the copyright.

To stars that brushed them with their silver wings. Together with the moon I climbed the hill, And, in the very heart of Silence, heard The speech and music of immortal things.

IN ROMNEY MARSH

BY JOHN DAVIDSON

As I went down to Dymchurch Wall,
I heard the South sing o'er the land;
I saw the yellow sunlight fall

On knolls where Norman churches stand.

And ringing shrilly, taut and lithe,

Within the wind a core of sound,
The wire from Romney town to Hythe
Alone its airy journey wound.

A veil of purple vapor flowed

And trailed its fringe along the Straits;
The upper air like sapphire glowed;
The roses filled heaven's central gates.

Masts in the offing wagged their tops;
The swinging waves pealed on the shore;
The saffron beach, all diamond drops

And beads of surge, prolonged the roar.

As I came up from Dymchurch Wall,
I saw above the Down's low crest