The speaker feels an irresistible pull toward the distant hills, a longing for something he cannot quite name. He questions what his fancy really seeks: do those far-off woods hold thicker oaks, the floods flow with different water, or the grass grow a greener green? One by one, he imagines the hills’ inhabitants—ploughmen, milkmaids—and finds them exactly like the people he knows. If all is only common things, he reasons, the journey would be idly made, for he can see the same moon and stars from home. Yet the pull remains. Poets, he admits, have the power to make lands where fancy dwells seem better, and so his mind clings to “thought and semblance undefined, / Nowhere and everywhere.” The mood is gently self-aware: a quiet, wistful recognition that our restlessness is a trick of the imagination, at once a comfort and a gentle cheat.
Distant Hills — Summary
What is there in those distant hills My fancy longs to see, That many a mood of joy instils? Say what can fancy be?
Do old oaks thicken all the woods, With weeds and brakes as here? Does common water make the floods, That's common everywhere?
Is grass the green that clothes the ground? Are springs the common springs? Daisies and cowslips dropping round, Are such the flowers she brings?
Are cottages of mud and stone, By valley wood and glen, And their calm dwellers little known Men, and but common men,
That drive afield with carts and ploughs? Such men are common here, And pastoral maidens milking cows Are dwelling everywhere.
If so my fancy idly clings To notions far away, And longs to roam for common things All round her every day,
Right idle would the journey be To leave one's home so far, And see the moon I now can see And every little star.
And have they there a night and day, And common counted hours? And do they see so far away This very moon of ours?
I mark him climb above the trees With one small [comrade] star, And think me in my reveries-- He cannot shine so far.
The poets in the tales they tell And with their happy powers Have made lands where their fancies dwell Seem better lands than ours.
Why need I sigh far hills to see If grass is their array, While here the little paths go through The greenest every day?
Such fancies fill the restless mind, At once to cheat and cheer With thought and semblance undefined, Nowhere and everywhere.