Jonathan Houghton recalls a warm rural moment from his younger days: a crow cawing, a thrush singing, a cowbell in the distance, an old man asleep under a tree, an old woman crossing with blackberries, and a boy lying in the grass watching clouds. The boy aches for manhood, life, and the unknown world ahead. Thirty years pass, and the boy returns worn out by that same life. The orchard and forest are gone, the house has been remodeled, and the road is dusty with car traffic. Where he once yearned for the future, he now longs for “The Hill,” the burial ground in Spoon River. The mood is bittersweet and elegiac. It captures how time erases familiar places and how longing reverses: youth desires experience, while exhausted age desires rest. The poem feels quiet, regretful, and tender toward both the vanished landscape and the boy’s earlier hope.
Jonathan Houghton — Summary
There is the caw of a crow, And the hesitant song of a thrush. There is the tinkle of a cowbell far away, And the voice of a plowman on Shipley’s hill. The forest beyond the orchard is still With midsummer stillness; And along the road a wagon chuckles, Loaded with corn, going to Atterbury. And an old man sits under a tree asleep, And an old woman crosses the road, Coming from the orchard with a bucket of blackberries. And a boy lies in the grass Near the feet of the old man, And looks up at the sailing clouds, And longs, and longs, and longs For what, he knows not: For manhood, for life, for the unknown world! Then thirty years passed, And the boy returned worn out by life And found the orchard vanished, And the forest gone, And the house made over, And the roadway filled with dust from automobiles— And himself desiring The Hill!