Hilda Of The Hillside

I.     Who is she, like the spring, who comes down     From the hills to the smoke-huddled town?     With her peach-petal face     And her wildflower grace,     Bringing sunshine and gladness to each sorry place?     Her cheeks are twin buds o' the brier,     Mixed fervors of snow and of fire;     Her lips are the red     Of a rose that is wed     To dew and aroma when dawn is o'erhead:     Her eyes are twin bits o' the skies,     Blue glimpses of Paradise;     The strands of her hair     Are sunlight and air     Herself is the argument that she is fair,     This girl with the dawn in her eyes. II.     If Herrick had looked on her face     His lyrics had learned a new grace:     Her face is a book     Where each laugh and each look,     Each smile is a lyric, more sweet than a brook:     Her words they are birds that are heard     Singing low where the roses are stirred,     The buds of her lips,     Whence each of them slips     With music as soft as the fragrance that drips     From a dew-dreaming bloom;     With their sound and perfume     Making all my glad heart a love-haunted room. III.     But she she knows nothing of love!     She she with the soul of a dove,     Who dwells on the hills,     Knowing naught of the ills     Of the vales, of the hearts that with passion she fills:     For whom all my soul     Is a harp from which roll     The songs that she hears not, the voice of my love,     This girl who goes singing above.