The Lonely Hill

Houses on a Hill (1879) by Winslow Homer

I left the city to find God

And found a lonely hill.

There my pilgrim family lost

Did find a home, a way of living,

Where love was the right

Of every soul inside.

My father held much inside,

Known still only by God.

Perhaps he was right.

And yet I have my hill,

And I have made a living

On the wealth that he has lost.

My mother was surely as lost

As I when she, locked inside

A too large home, send me living

With a man of God

Who was to me a lonely hill

Where I learned wrong from right.

My brother looked right

Past me. Perhaps there, lost

To distance, was his own hill

With a home and a fire inside.

Each day I pray to God

That fire is, in his heart, still living.

My sister was robbed of living.

And it can never be made right

Except that, by the Grace of God,

The young joy that was lost

Has turned to faith inside,

Piled high as a hill.

My children play on our lonely hill.

My dog chases all that’s living.

My wife prays while cleaning inside.

My priest has blessed it left and right.

Up the hill, I am slowly leading that lost

Boy I once knew back to God.

For all those who are lost inside 

And living apart from God,

He waits for you right atop the lonely hill.