The shrubbery of the bleak mountain top.
Within me was a voice which bade me look
Upon the ages which had passed away;—
Upon the time when those far-spreading vales
Were peopled by another race of men ;-
The builders of the proud sepulchral pile
And architects of works of use unknown.
"Tis thus the potent finger of decay
Saps the foundation of all earthly things,
And there will pass a very few brief years
Ere all who people this fair land shall lie
In the same grave which holds her earliest sons.
The oak shall grow upon the well ploughed glebe—
The wild vine leap upon the nectarine's trunk,
And strangle it with a too close embrace-
The thistle shall o'errun the beautiful mead-
The bison feed upon the cities' site-
The adder coil him in the lady's bower
And hiss upon the mastodon, as he
Comes from his exile of a thousand years.
And these shall be because such things have been, For nature is immutable and keeps
This little rill that, from the springs
Of yonder grove, its current brings,
Plays on the slope awhile, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet when life was new.
When woods in early green were drest,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play;
To crop the violet on its brim,
And listen to the throstle's hymn,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.
And when the days of boyhood came, And I had grown in love with fame, Duly I sought thy banks, and tried My first rude numbers by thy side. Words cannot tell how glad and gay The scenes of life before me lay. High visions then, and lofty schemes Glorious and bright as fairy dreams, And daring hopes, that now to speak Would bring the blood into my cheek,
Passed o'er me; and I wrote on high
A name I deemed should never die.
Years change thee not. Upon yon hill
The tall old maples, verdant still,
Yet tell, in proud and grand decay,
How swift the years have passed away,
Since first, a child, and half afraid,
I wandered in the forest shade.
But thou, gay, merry rivulet,
Dost dimple, play, and prattle yet;
And sporting with the sands that pave
The windings of thy silver wave,
And dancing to thy own wild chime,
Thou laughest at the lapse of time.
The same sweet sounds are in my ear
My early childhood loved to hear;
As pure thy limpid waters run,
As bright they sparkle to the sun;
As fresh the herbs that crowd to drink
The moisture of thy oozy brink;
The violet there, in soft May dew,
Comes up, as modest and as blue;
As green amid thy current's stress,
Floats the scarce-rooted water cress;
And the brown ground bird, in thy glen,
Still chirps as merrily as then.
Thou changest not-but I am changed, Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged;
And the grave stranger, come to see
The play-place of his infancy,
Has scarce a single trace of him
Who sported once upon thy brim.
The visions of my youth are past—
Too bright, too beautiful to last.
I've tried the world-it wears no more
The colouring of romance it wore.
Yet well has nature kept the truth
She promised to my earliest youth;
The radiant beauty, shed abroad
On all the glorious works of God,
Shows freshly, to my sobered eye,
Each charm it wore in days gone by.
A few brief years shall pass away,
And I, all trembling, weak, and grey,
Bowed to the earth, which waits to fold
My ashes in the embracing mould,
(If haply the dark will of fate
Indulge my life so long a date)
May come for the last time to look
Upon my childhood's favourite brook.
Then dimly on my eye shall gleam
The sparkle of thy dancing stream;
And faintly on my ear shall fall
Thy prattling current's merry call;
Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright
As when thou met'st my infant sight.
And I shall sleep-and on thy side,
As ages after ages glide,
Children their early sports shall try,
And pass to hoary age and die.
But thou, unchanged from year to year,
Gaily shalt play and glitter here;
Amid young flowers and tender grass
Thy endless infancy shalt pass;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shalt mock the fading race of men.
A night had passed away among the hills, And now the first faint tokens of the dawn Showed in the east. The bright and dewy star, Whose mission is to usher in the morn, Looked through the cool air, like a blessed thing In a far purer world. Below there lay Wrapped round a woody mountain tranquilly A misty cloud. Its edges caught the light, That now came up from out the unseen depth Of the full fount of day, and they were laced With colours ever-brightening. I had waked From a long sleep of many changing dreams, And now in the fresh forest air I stood Nerved to another day of wandering.
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