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Emerald nobility

Reaching to the sky,

Makes the eye a ruler

Fit to measure by.

In the spring an ecstasy

Lies upon the hills—

Purpling with new red-buds,

Ruffling colored frills.

Make an early ritual

For the mountain side;

Pine and beech are spectators,

White dogwood a bride.

Give a pair of ivory birch

For a wedding gift,

All the mountain side a church

Where wild flowers sift

Velvet carpet-petals down

To the edge of hill and town,

Showing wild-grape fringes through

Opal cloud-thrones dropped from blue.

Now the summer like a queen

Does her mountain home in green;

With a season for a bier

Some old majesty lies here.

Autumn gold is swift and fleet

With a wing upon the feet,

Rushing toward a winter breath

Pausing for immaculate death.

In such economic bliss

And a swift parenthesis—

In immortal mountain trails,

There are resurrection tales.

All the while the mountains know

Sudden death is never so.

—Rachel Mack Wilson