Hills O’my Heart Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

Hills o' my heart!
I have come to you at calling of my one love and only,
I have left behind the cruel scarlet wind of the east,
The hearth of my fathers wanting me is lonely,
And empty is the place I filled at gathering of the feast.

Hills o' my heart!
You have cradled him I love in your green quiet hollows,
Your wavering winds have hushed him to soft forgetful sleep,
Below dusk boughs where bird-voice after bird-voice follows
In shafts of silver melody that split the hearkening deep.

Hills o' my heart!
Let the Herdsman who walks in your high haunted places
Give him strength and courage, and weave his dreams alway:
Let your cairn-heaped hero-dead reveal their grand exultant faces,
And the Gentle Folk be good to him betwixt the dark and day.

Hills o' my heart!
And I would the Green Harper might wake his soul to singing,
With music of the golden wires heard when the world was new,
That from his lips an echo of its sweetness may come ringing,
Song of pure and noble hopes–a song of all things true.

Hills o' my heart!
For sake of the yellow head that drew me wandering over,
Your misty crests from my own home where sorrow bided then,
I set my seven blessings on your kindly heather cover,
On every starry moorland loch, and every shadowy glen.
Hills o' my heart!