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. | |
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“What town is this?” I asked. | |
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“This? Lunenburg.” | 20 |
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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?” | |
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“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 |
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“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.” | |
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“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 |
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“You’ve never climbed it?” | |
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“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 |
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“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.” | |
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“What did he say?” | 80 |
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“He said there was a lake | |
Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top.” | |
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“But a lake’s different. What about the spring?” | |
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“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.” | |
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“I shouldn’t climb it if I didn’t want to— | 95 |
Not for the sake of climbing. What’s its name?” | |
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“We call it Hor: I don’t know if that’s right.” | |
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“Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?” | |
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“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 |
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“Warm in December, cold in June, you say?” | |
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“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 |
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“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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