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Beyond the Hills of Dream

Chapter 9: In the Spring Fields
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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.

There dwells a spirit in the budding year—
As motherhood doth beautify the face—
That even lends these barren glebes a grace,
And fills gray hours with beauty that were drear
And bleak when the loud, storming March was here:
A glamour that the thrilled heart dimly traces
In swelling boughs and soft, wet, windy spaces,
And sunlands where the chattering birds make cheer.
I thread the uplands where the wind’s footfalls
Stir leaves in gusty hollows, autumn’s urns.
Seaward the river’s shining breast expands,
High in the windy pines a lone crow calls,
And far below some patient ploughman turns
His great black furrow over steaming lands.