THE HILL
Men as I’ve known ’ud ha’ carried it off—married, an’ started sheep.
Couldn’t,—just think o’ the woman....Besides, what if I talk asleep?
Back in the wharé there’s none to hear, an’ the wind it bellows an’ blows—
Lord! it’s lonesome and eerie enough—but it’s safe, though. Nobody knows!
In the dead o’ night, at the very hour, often I wake, an’—Hark!....
Nothin’! only the dreadful Sea, tellin’ the dreadful Dark;
An’ they terrible Stars a-pointin’ at me, witnessin’, layin’ bare—
An’ yet, that’s a kind o’ a little relief, that they know, like the Hill: they share.
But I couldn’t ha’ done wi’ lambs, nor I couldn’t ha’ stood the face of a child—
There’s little kiddies live hereabouts that pretty well drives me wild.
When I have to pass by the schoolhouse door, my eyes get sneakin’ away;
Turn, o’ theirselves, to their own place, there!—waitin’ across the Bay.
It’s a rummy thing, how the Spring can start, an’ the Sun keep shinin’ still,
Year after year,—an’ all the time, That laid up in the Hill?
An’ the Stars go on, an’ the Sea goes on, an’ the lambs can be born an’ be.
You’d ha’ thought ’twould ha’ changed the world?—It has: but only for him, an’ me.
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