The Hills

There is no joy of earth that thrills
  My bosom like the far-off hills!
  Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
  Beckon our mutability
  To follow and to gaze upon
  Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
  Meseems the very heavens are massed
  Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
  With all the skyey burden of
  The winds and clouds and stars above.
  Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
  The laws that give all Beauty being!
  Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
  The nomads of the air appear,
  Unfolding crimson camps of day
  In brilliant bands; then march away;
  And under burning battlements
  Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
  The faith of olden myths, that brood
  By haunted stream and haunted wood,
  They see; and feel the happiness
  Of old at which we only guess:
  The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,
  Still as their rocks and trees are true:
  Not otherwise than presences
  The tempest and the calm to these:
  One shouting on them, all the night,
  Black-limbed and veined with lambent light:
  The other with the ministry
  Of all soft things that company
  With music--an embodied form,
  Giving to solitude the charm
  Of leaves and waters and the peace
  Of bird-begotten melodies--
  And who at night doth still confer
  With the mild moon, who telleth her
  Pale tale of lonely love, until
  Wan images of passion fill
  The heights with shapes that glimmer by
  Clad on with sleep and memory.