Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

<h2><SPAN name="chap05"></SPAN>TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL</h2> <h5>I.</h5> <h5>YOUTH</h5> <p class="poem"> I love to watch the world from here, for all<br/> The numberless living portraits that are drawn<br/> Upon the mind. Far over is the sea,<br/> Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes,<br/> A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green,<br/> With brackish gullies wandering in between,<br/> All this from the hill.<br/> And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars,<br/> Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun<br/> A field of daises wandering in the wind<br/> As though a hidden serpent glided through,<br/> A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then<br/> The dusty road and the abodes of men<br/> Surrounding the hill.<br/> How small the enclosure is wherein there lives<br/> Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail<br/> Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea,<br/> From that far place to where in state the turf<br/> Raises a throne for me upon the hill,<br/> Each little love and lust of a living thing<br/> Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring<br/> And seen from the hill.<br/></p> <h5>II.</h5> <h5>AGE</h5> <p class="poem"> Why did I build my cottage on a hill<br/> Facing the sea? Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope<br/> Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope,<br/> Surging and sweeping,<br/> laughing and leaping,<br/> Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore,<br/> Rustling the sands that know my step no more,<br/> I should have found a valley, deep and still,<br/> To shelter me.<br/> <br/> There flows the river, and it seems asleep<br/> So far away,<br/> Yet I remember whip of wave and roar<br/> Of wind that rose and smote against the oar,<br/> Smote and retreated,<br/> Proud but defeated,<br/> While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine,<br/> Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line<br/> The great cod quivering from the deep<br/> As counterplay.<br/> <br/> What is the solace of these hills and vales<br/> That rise and fall?<br/> What is there glorious in the greenwood glen,<br/> Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren?<br/> Give me the gusty,<br/> Raucous and rusty<br/> Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky,<br/> The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die,<br/> Give me the life that follows the bending sails,<br/> Or none at all!<br/></p> <p class="left"> ERNEST BENSHIMOL</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />