THE SONG OF THE HILLSBEING THE SONG OF A MAN AND A WOMAN WHO MIGHT HAVE LOVEDFrom the Yokut Indian Dialect, Done into English by Mary Austin) 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."