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Beyond the Hills of Dream

Chapter 7: A Wood Lyric
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About This Book

A sequence of lyrical poems moves between meditations on nature and elegy, intimate love lyrics, classical and historical sketches, and reflections on public life. Seasonal and landscape imagery—shorelines, woods, hills, and morning light—frames explorations of loss, memory, longing, and the consolations of fancy; several elegies mourn vanished friends or past ages while narrative pieces recall antiquity and voyages. The voice shifts from private yearning and pastoral observation to occasional public-address poems that honor places and figures, blending mythic allusion with local scenery and contemplative religious tones. The collection combines late‑Victorian musicality with restrained moral and reflective temper.

Into the stilly woods I go,
Where the shades are deep and the wind-flowers blow,
And the hours are dreamy and lone and long,
And the power of silence is greater than song.
Into the stilly woods I go,
Where the leaves are cool and the wind-flowers blow.
O life-worn brothers, come with me
Into the wood’s hushed sanctity,
Where the great, cool branches are heavy with June,
And the voices of summer are strung in tune;
Come with me, O heart outworn,
Or spirit whom life’s brute-struggles have torn,
Come, tired and broken and wounded feet,
Where the walls are greening, the floors are sweet,
The roofs are breathing and heaven’s airs meet.
Come, wash earth’s grievings from out of the face,
The tear and the sneer and the warfare’s trace,
Come where the bells of the forest are ringing,
Come where the oriole’s nest is swinging,
Where the brooks are foaming in amber pools,
The mornings are still and the noonday cools.
Cast off earth’s sorrows and know what I know,
When into the glad, deep woods I go.