Hill

“ No hill, covered with common scrub or patches of purple heath, could have been so sublimely hilly as that ridge up to which the ranked furrows rose like aspiring angels. No valley, confused with needless cottages and towns, can have been so utterly valleyish as that abyss into which the down-rushing furrows raged like demons into the swirling pit. ”

“ You walk along the valley, through paths trodden out of the undergrowth, deviously wandering up hill, or down hill, as rock or tree has interposed. Many a spot of quiet beauty solicits you to loiter, and loitering, you feel that there are places from which the winds appear to gather poetry. ”

“ Fancy yourself on the top of the hill looking down this illuminated avenue of firs, which is reflected in the mirror of the ice, as if determining to outshine the lights in the clear sky, and the gay laughing crowds moving up and down the hills, and you have before you the finest and most perfect picture of sorrowless enjoyment, as a striking contrast to the lifeless nature surrounding it. ”

“ What a sense of elastic joy and freedom to me, who had not spent a summer in the country for three years, to lie stretched at full length on the top of a new-mown hill, and let the eye wander over the valley beneath, with its intervening woods and ponds, till it rested upon the distant mountains, the cloud-shadows chasing each other over their sides and summits! ”

“ The life of the hill people was simple and beautiful—children playing about their small, grass thatched, white plastered homes, men hoeing corn, women picking wild coffee, and always the simple songs of the hills were on their lips. ”

“ WE have all of us seen hills, or what we call hills, from the monstrous protuberances of the Andes and the Himalaya to such puny pimples as lie about the edges of your fens. Next to a waterfall, the first natural object (according to my own experience) to impress itself on a child's mind is a hill, some spot from which he can enlarge his horizon. Hills, and still more mountains, attract the human imagination and curiosity. ”

“ Here it is possible to linger for many hours alone, and to watch the slope of the hill under the level light as the sun descends. Here passes a woman of such nobility that, though she is dead, the landscape and the vines are hers. ”

“ A bare and rocky hill or knoll suggests images of bleak and barren desolation, cold blasts, and parching sun; while a hill clothed and capped with woods gives the impression of a rich and charming country. ”

“ Swifter and swifter, till over the crest
Of the hill, and down to the valley below,
Through the murk of the mist and the white of the snow—
Now my steed falters, as, breathless and slow,
Up the steep hillside he labors and grinds,
Grinds—Grinds—Grinds—Grinds—
Across and across he turns and winds, [106]
Sand-clogged and rock-hindered, without hope or faith,
No longer a soul, but a sin-burdened wraith—
Till, reaching the summit, he spurns the dark hill,
And onward he plunges, for good or for ill,
Over and onward, and onward and over,
He reels and he spins like a jolly old rover. ”

“ From the brow of the hill we descended with extreme rapidity—down, down into a valley which sent up a damp, oppressive atmosphere. Through the trees I could see one lovely ball of deep, rich red, painting the earth as it sank in a beauty exquisite beyond all else. ”

“ Standing upon almost the highest point of the hill, it commands a wide and beautiful prospect, especially toward the north and east, the eye shooting over the whole expanse of city and suburbs, and then resting upon the purple outline of the distant mountains. ”

“ Up a hill we climbed—which in many neighbourhoods would be thought a mountain—and passed paragons, and circuses, and crescents, on left and right, wondering when we were ever to emerge into the open air. ”

“ More hills rose from the plain on every side, as simply as if they had been built there by the hand of some gigantic child playing in a wilderness of sand. And the river, coming around the base of the hill on which I was standing, but several miles away, swept out upon a great aqueduct of stone, hundreds of feet high, which crossed the plain through its very center, a straight line of breath-taking beauty, and disappeared far away into the pass between two mountains. ”

“ The most familiar sheet of water viewed from a new hill-top, yields a novel and unexpected pleasure. When we have travelled a few miles, we do not recognize the profiles even of the hills which overlook our native village, and perhaps no man is quite familiar with the horizon as seen from the hill nearest to his house, and can recall its outline distinctly when in the valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a short distance, which way the hills range which take in our houses and farms in their sweep. ”

“ Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a limbo-litten pane,
Within its walls of storm, the West opens to hill and plain,
On which the wild-geese ink themselves, a far triangled train,
And then the shuttering clouds close down—and night is here again. [203]
THE HILLS
There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills! ”

“ The more so if, as in one my mind recreates for me as I write, there are glades where I can come to a rock whence an over-leaning white hill may be seen as though falling out of heaven, with white mountains beyond, white shoulders lapsing on white shoulders, white peaks rising beyond white peaks, white crests fading into further snowy crests, and, nearer, it may be, glens sinking into glens, no longer a sombre green, but as though stilled avalanches awaiting a magician’s unloosening spell. ”

“ It is a broad, beautiful road, winding through hill and dale, with grand old forests and mountains in the background, their foliage tipped with variegated colors by the fingers of Autumn, as an artist would put a finishing touch to his landscape. ”

“ One hill alone, the highest in elevation, and about ten miles to the south-westward, was enveloped in a cloud, which just permitted a dim and hazy sight of a signal-post, a light-house, and an ancient chantry, built on its summit. ”

“ It is as though in some hill country where we have been following our pleasant woodland tracks and mounting little heights and points of vantage, we come out upon the open and discern, high above us, the lofty peak or the solemn mass of the great hill or moorland about whose flanks we have been moving, whose swell and lift, though itself was unknown to us, has been under our feet as we mounted, and towards whose height converging tracks have come. ”

“ Then I steadily ascended along a rock ridge, half clad with stunted trees, where wild beasts haunted, till I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a mountain, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity. What distinguishes that summit above the earthy line, is that it is unhandseled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar. You are lost the moment you set foot there. You know no path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. ”

“ The slight slope of a green hill, the rise of a grassy bank at an after-period, bends the calm stream hither and thither through the plains, offering the most beautiful image of the effect of circumstances on the course of human life. ”

“ The mountain peak, the rounded hill, the wide plain which lies where hills and mountains once stood, tell clearly of the great results which slow processes will reach when given long time in which to do their work. ”

“ For a while I examined the valley, but I saw no sign of life there. Then I turned and went slowly up the hill, the sunlight falling warmly on my body, and my feet sinking sensuously in the deep grass.
When I came to the crest and looked over, I saw another valley before me, deeper than the first. The hill rolled away, down [Pg 14] and down for miles, to a long, wide plain. ”

“ blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, and an open path: My feet to follow, and my heart to hold. ”

“ Up in the hills it is a pleasant world—you pass through many different zones of vegetation very rapidly—at one moment all is laurel and heath—you cross a well-marked line and all is tilling—then you are out among dead bracken on an open hill-top that might be English. ”

“ In hilly country, one hill hides another when you look from the ground, but when you are high up in the sky, like the eagle, the mountains all seem to lose their height and appear flat and naturally your view is unobstructed. ”

“ The Hill Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. ”

“ Hills are insensibly crumbling into the valleys, valleys are silently eroded, and crags that ever since the birth of man have been the landmarks of the race, are yet slowly but surely melting away. It matters not where the hill or plain may lie, the highest mountains of the tropics and the frozen soil of the poles, yield each in its measure and degree to the influence of the general law. ”

“ He found that there were here most beautiful walks, in which he might ramble along for miles, in all directions, without ever finding an end of them, so immensely large was the hill that the little people lived in, and yet outwardly it seemed but a little hill, with a few bushes and trees growing on it. ”

“ Instead of being level, like plains, the land in some places slopes up and up until it is higher than a house, or the tallest tree. Such land is called a hill.
A very high hill is called a mountain. ”

“ But there is a great deal outside it.{39} A splendid hill, covered to the summit with blue-green pine-trees, looms up in front of it; behind is a long valley, pierced through the heart by a flashing mountain-stream; all round are more hills topped with yet more pine-woods ”

“ Watatic Hill Lies on the horizon’s sill Like a child’s toy left overnight, And other duds to left and right, On the earth’s edge, mountains and trees Stand as they were on air graven, Or as the vessels in a haven Await the morning breeze. ”

“ Ascending these hills, we find ourselves at once in an elevated plain, covered with corn and lines of apple trees, extending to the next river side, where we come to the brow of another hill, and descend to the city and valley beneath it. ”

“ But the windows of heaven were opened,—and, like giants refreshed with mountain-dew, the rivers flung themselves over the cliffs with roars of thunder. The autumnal woods are fresher than those of summer. The mild harvest-moon will yet repair the evil done by the outrageous sun; and, in the gracious after-growth, the green earth far and wide rejoices as in spring. Like people that have hidden themselves in caves when their native land was oppressed, out gush the torrents, and descend with songs to the plain. The hill-country is itself again when it hears the voice of streams. ”

“ All is so still,
Never wind blows,
Only the singing stream
Shouts little waterfalls.
We round the mighty shoulder of a hill—
Oh, sweet airs damp with ferns!
The day is old, the lengthening shadows chill—
The wanderer returns.{73}
Traffic, and wakeful eyes of little lights;
The black crowd passing near; and far away
A fading rose of sunset hanging low
Above the roofs of indigo and grey.
{74}
“BELLS FROM OVER THE HILLS SOUND SWEET.”—Russian Proverb. ”

“ Sometimes the cloud lies supported in the hollow of the hill, as if out of love it feigned weariness, and needed to be upheld. At other times the whole hill stands enveloped in the cloud that has expanded to embrace and to conceal it. No jealousy here. Each lives its own grand life under the equal eye of heaven. ”

“ At a distance, the hill looks greener than any other part of the landscape, and has all the curved outlines of a natural hill, resembling in shape a headless sphinx, or Saddleback Mountain, as I used to see it from Lenox. ”

“ On every side, as if to enhance the preciousness of the city, the woods hung dark on the hills; above, the sky was violet, specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. ”

“ Sometimes you will see only one or two clouds during a whole morning, come out of the side of a hill; but we saw thousands upon thousands, bursting out, one after another, in all parts of these immense hills. ”

“ Green hills, with intersecting valleys, forest trees lifting their tops toward the sky, wide-spreading pasture lands, and, threading its way among them, a little mountain-stream, bright and pure as innocence itself ”

“ Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down;
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrown,
Fast by a brook or fountain's murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave. ”

“ Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe. ”

“ Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there. ”

“ The mountain summits, which are often wrapped in the clouds, at other times exhibit the freest outline; the immense scooped hollows which sink at your feet, declivities of so vast a depth as to give one terror to look down; with the unusual forms of the lower region of hills, particularly Bull Hill, and Round Hill, each a mile over, yet rising out of circular vales, with the regularity of semi-globes, unite upon the whole to exhibit a scenery to the eye in which the parts are of a magnitude so commanding, a character so interesting, and a variety so striking, p. ”

“ All around are illustrations of lake and river, upland and lowland, slope and valley. These forms must be actually observed by the pupil, mental pictures obtained, in order that he may be enabled to build up in his mind other mental pictures of similar unseen forms. The hill that he climbs each day may, by an appeal to his imagination, represent to him the lofty Andes or the Alps. From the meadow, or the bit of level land near the door, may be developed a notion of plain and prairie. ”