A speaker remembers the mountainside place his father shaped: a spring enclosed, walls built, earth tamed to grass, and a big family raised there. For a while the mountain seemed glad of the children’s energy, smiling on them almost like a fond parent. Now the children are scattered, the girls have married and changed their names, and the mountain no longer knows the family. The speaker says the mountain “pushed us off her knees,” and its open lap has filled with trees again. The mood is quiet and elegiac, mixing pride in what the father made with acceptance that nature has the longer memory. Human effort and family life feel temporary, while the mountain simply returns to wildness. It is wistful rather than angry—less a complaint than a recognition that the land outlasts the lives briefly brought to pass on it.
The Birthplace — Summary
Here further up the mountain slope Than there was ever any hope, My father built, enclosed a spring, Strung chains of wall round everything, Subdued the growth of earth to grass, And brought our various lives to pass. A dozen girls and boys we were. The mountain seemed to like the stir, And made of us a little while-- With always something in her smile. Today she wouldn’t know our name. (No girl’s, of course, has stayed the same.) The mountain pushed us off her knees. And now her lap is full of trees.