BEING THE SONG OF A MAN AND A WOMAN WHO MIGHT HAVE LOVED

This is the song of the Hills
In the hour when they talk together,
When the alpen glow dies down in the west
And leaves the heavens tender;
In the pure and shadowless hour
When the Mountains talk together:

"Fir tree leaneth to fir,
The wind-blown willows mingle;
Clouds draw each to each,
Dissolve, depart, and renew one another;
But the strong Hills hold asunder.

Had we been less we had loved,
We had stooped and been tender;
But our hands are under the earth
For the travail of her harvests,
Upholding the rain-sleeked fields
And the long, brown, fruitful furrow.
Terror taketh the earth
When the Mountains move together.

But ever as winds of spring
Set the meadow grasses caressing,
And the coo-dove calls
And the coo-dove's mate
Resounds in the oak-wood valleys,
We shall thrill with the brooding earth,
We shall turn, touch hands, and remember,
Had we been less, how much we had loved,
How nobly we might have been tender."

<the Yokut Indian>