| |
| THE MOUNTAIN held the town as in a shadow | |
| I saw so much before I slept there once: | |
| I noticed that I missed stars in the west, | |
| Where its black body cut into the sky. | |
| Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall | 5 |
| Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. | |
| And yet between the town and it I found, | |
| When I walked forth at dawn to see new things, | |
| Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields. | |
| The river at the time was fallen away, | 10 |
| And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones; | |
| But the signs showed what it had done in spring; | |
| Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass | |
| Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark. | |
| I crossed the river and swung round the mountain. | 15 |
| And there I met a man who moved so slow | |
| With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart, | |
| It seemed no hand to stop him altogether. | |
| |
| “What town is this?” I asked. | |
| |
| “This? Lunenburg.” | 20 |
| |
| Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn, | |
| Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain, | |
| But only felt at night its shadowy presence. | |
| “Where is your village? Very far from here?” | |
| |
| “There is no village—only scattered farms. | 25 |
| We were but sixty voters last election. | |
| We can’t in nature grow to many more: | |
| That thing takes all the room!” He moved his goad. | |
| The mountain stood there to be pointed at. | |
| Pasture ran up the side a little way, | 30 |
| And then there was a wall of trees with trunks: | |
| After that only tops of trees, and cliffs | |
| Imperfectly concealed among the leaves. | |
| A dry ravine emerged from under boughs | |
| Into the pasture. | 35 |
| |
| “That looks like a path. | |
| Is that the way to reach the top from here?— | |
| Not for this morning, but some other time: | |
| I must be getting back to breakfast now.” | |
| |
| “I don’t advise your trying from this side. | 40 |
| There is no proper path, but those that have | |
| Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd’s. | |
| That’s five miles back. You can’t mistake the place: | |
| They logged it there last winter some way up. | |
| I’d take you, but I’m bound the other way.” | 45 |
| |
| “You’ve never climbed it?” | |
| |
| “I’ve been on the sides | |
| Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There’s a brook | |
| That starts up on it somewhere—I’ve heard say | |
| Right on the top, tip-top—a curious thing. | 50 |
| But what would interest you about the brook, | |
| It’s always cold in summer, warm in winter. | |
| One of the great sights going is to see | |
| It steam in winter like an ox’s breath, | |
| Until the bushes all along its banks | 55 |
| Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles— | |
| You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!” | |
| |
| “There ought to be a view around the world | |
| From such a mountain—if it isn’t wooded | |
| Clear to the top.” I saw through leafy screens | 60 |
| Great granite terraces in sun and shadow, | |
| Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up— | |
| With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet; | |
| Or turn and sit on and look out and down, | |
| With little ferns in crevices at his elbow. | 65 |
| |
| “As to that I can’t say. But there’s the spring, | |
| Right on the summit, almost like a fountain. | |
| That ought to be worth seeing.” | |
| |
| “If it’s there. | |
| You never saw it?” | 70 |
| |
| “I guess there’s no doubt | |
| About its being there. I never saw it. | |
| It may not be right on the very top: | |
| It wouldn’t have to be a long way down | |
| To have some head of water from above, | 75 |
| And a good distance down might not be noticed | |
| By anyone who’d come a long way up. | |
| One time I asked a fellow climbing it | |
| To look and tell me later how it was.” | |
| |
| “What did he say?” | 80 |
| |
| “He said there was a lake | |
| Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top.” | |
| |
| “But a lake’s different. What about the spring?” | |
| |
| “He never got up high enough to see. | |
| That’s why I don’t advise your trying this side. | 85 |
| He tried this side. I’ve always meant to go | |
| And look myself, but you know how it is: | |
| It doesn’t seem so much to climb a mountain | |
| You’ve worked around the foot of all your life. | |
| What would I do? Go in my overalls, | 90 |
| With a big stick, the same as when the cows | |
| Haven’t come down to the bars at milking time? | |
| Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear? | |
| ’Twouldn’t seem real to climb for climbing it.” | |
| |
| “I shouldn’t climb it if I didn’t want to— | 95 |
| Not for the sake of climbing. What’s its name?” | |
| |
| “We call it Hor: I don’t know if that’s right.” | |
| |
| “Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?” | |
| |
| “You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg, | |
| But it’s as much as ever you can do, | 100 |
| The boundary lines keep in so close to it. | |
| Hor is the township, and the township’s Hor— | |
| And a few houses sprinkled round the foot, | |
| Like boulders broken off the upper cliff, | |
| Rolled out a little farther than the rest.” | 105 |
| |
| “Warm in December, cold in June, you say?” | |
| |
| “I don’t suppose the water’s changed at all. | |
| You and I know enough to know it’s warm | |
| Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. | |
| But all the fun’s in how you say a thing.” | 110 |
| |
| “You’ve lived here all your life?” | |
| |
| “Ever since Hor | |
| Was no bigger than a——” What, I did not hear. | |
| He drew the oxen toward him with light touches | |
| Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank, | 115 |
| Gave them their marching orders and was moving. | |
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