The hills are high in Caribou —
The air is clear, the skies are blue;
But where a black ledge seams the ground
The yellow witch's tracks are found,
And men grow drunk with ravishment
Once they have caught the witch's scent.

The aspens on the mountain side
Were green when Carlo brought his bride,
The cherry-cheeked Selina, to
The haunted hills of Caribou.

" You better take your man and go, "
The old wives warned, " before the snow.
The yellow witch hides in these hills,
And gets our men against their wills. "

The hills and rivers of the lowland country
You have made your battle-ground.
How do you suppose the people who live there
Will procure " firewood and hay " ?
Do not let me hear you talking together
About titles and promotions;
For a single general's reputation
Is made out of ten thousand corpses.

High upon the hillside where the shadows play
Lives gentle Mrs. Rabbit with her family of three,
And Spillikins and Spottikins, it's only right to say,
Are the dearest little rabbits you can ever hope to see.
But Skippets is the bad one,
The mad one,
The saucy one,
Skippets is the lazy one who won't wash his face.
Skippets is the naughty one,
The haughty one,
The pushing one,
Skippets is the forward one who doesn't know his place.

Spillikins and Spottikins will never stay out late,

I.

Yes, I am he, who, on the sounding shore
Of that lone island, to the wondrous man
Who o'er the sea his fated exile ran,
So many varying forms and features wore;
By me was found the art to change the scene
Of the life-mocking theatre, when night
Holds such a kindling mirror to the sight,
That things seem gay and bright, which else were mean:
And then how many images are seen,
All pure and sweet and beautiful, light shades
Of raptured youths, and coy, retiring maids!
And when the night is silent and serene,

High on the bold, gray granite shelf
He builds his cabin, bleak and lone,
Where eagles well might covet it
As in an eyrie of their own.

Here from his station on the height
He views the land far, far below,
And sees where slopes of pinon green
Reach upward, ending in the snow.

With pipe and glass, and dog and gun,
Companions of the plain and wood,
He sits and scans the broken peaks,
Which breathe of peace and solitude.

All thro' the quiet night he hears
The weird and lonely owlet hoots;

High on a rough and dismal crag,
Where Kean might spout, “Ay, there's the rub,”
Where oft, no doubt, some midnight hag
Had danced a jig with Beelzebub,
There stood beneath the pale moonlight
A miner grim with visage long,
Who vexed the drowsy ear of night
With dreadful rhyme and dismal song.

He sang: “I have no harp or lute
To sound the stern decrees of fate;
I once possessed a two-holed flute,
But that I sold to raise a stake.
Then wake thy strains, my wild tin-pan,
Affright the crickets from their lairs,

High o'er his moldering castle walls
The warrior's phantom glides,
And loudly to the skiff it calls
That on the billow rides—

“Behold! these arms once vaunted might,
This heart beat wild and bold—
Behold! these ducal veins ran bright
With wine-red blood of old.

“The noon in storm, the eve in rest,
So sped my life's brief day.
What then? Young bark on Ocean's breast,
Cleave thou thy destined way!”

High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song. —
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long: —

" From town to town, from tower to tower,
The red rose is a gladsome flower.
Her thirty years of winter past,
The red rose is revived at last;
She lifts her head for endless spring,
For everlasting blossoming:
Both roses flourish, red and white:
In love and sisterly delight
The two that were at strife are blended,

The high hills have a bitterness
Now they are not known
And memory is poor enough consolation
For the soul hopeless gone.
Up in the air there beech tangles wildly in the wind —
That I can imagine
But the speed, the swiftness, walking into clarity,
Like last year's bryony are gone.

HIGH-BORN Helen, round your dwelling
 These twenty years I've paced in vain:
Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty
 Hath been to glory in his pain.

High-born Helen, plainly telling
 Stories of thy cold disdain;
I starve, I die, now you comply,
 And I no longer can complain.

These twenty years I've lived on tears,
 Dwelling for ever on a frown;
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread;
 I perish now you kind are grown.

Can I, who loved my beloved
 But for the scorn “was in her eye,”
Can I be moved for my beloved,