The Mountain
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
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,
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.
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.”
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.
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,
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.
“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.
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.”
“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.
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
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
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.
“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?”
“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,
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?”
“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.
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,
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—
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,
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.”
“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.”
“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,
Gave them their marching orders
and was moving.
