WESTMORELAND and the hills of Cumberland,
Though Alps may overpeer them, have a name
Unperishing while the earth still bears in man
The blossom of a high-aspiring mind;
For Wordsworth loved them. And the sacred poet
Helvetia lacks not, nor old-age Japan,
A poet whose song above the fields of tea,
Above the temples to the figured god
Ancient in beauty set against the ascent,
Rises supreme to where above them all
Uplifts a hollow summit white with snow
Pale Fuji-san, and there in music builds
A temple sheer in beauty to the sky!
No outland peaks I know; but were I born
Among the lakes, or in the fields of Kai
No other were the song's essential heart
Upon the mountains that I then should sing;
For once I saw a summit not so bright
As these are fabled, mounting to the sky
In scar and ice-cliff loftily supreme,
But such a mountain as New England knows;
And never since in moments when the press
Of life has lifted has the mountain's touch —
Joy, merely joy and beauty, that is all,
And passionate love and depth and mystery —
Left me! and thus I sing a native song,
Content to be a brother to Japan,
Cousin to Switzerland, believing true
That ere he wanders by Castalian springs
The poet first must drink the wells of home.