The picture, you rave over there on the wall,
Is weak by the one hung in memory’s hall.
While that one is held by the fetters of art
To rules of perspective—can only give part,
The other has range over hill-top and dell,
From the vaulted blue sky to the depths of the well—
Can even give sense of refreshing from this—
Show stars gleaming thro’ from its seeming abyss.
It has other delights, never reached with a brush,
The ravishment held in the notes of a thrush
(The sweetest voiced bird of the singing-bird throng)
Reverberant groves all a-thrill with its song.
Then the river, that knit a bright edge on the farm,
Enmantled with vapor—etherial charm!
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As if dawn and the dew, meeting, playfully kissed
When the sun peeping over dissolved them in mist;
Like a gauzy, white chrisom cloth lightly it lies
O’er the rosy-faced morning, new-born of the skies.
Now, mellow and sweet as the music of dream,
Or a softly touched lute, comes the song of the stream;
Enchanted I listen, ay, listen and gaze
Till sound seems enwreathed with this luminous haze
That’s woven for nymphs, of the sunshine and spray;
And veiled in these light robes they mingle in play
Till on bloom scented breezes they’re floated away.
I promised to tell of my humble old home,
But my pen wanders off where my feet used to roam,
So the home of my childhood I picture for you
Must cover the rambles “my infancy knew.”
Come, stand ’neath that maple with me, if you will:
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The manse, looking south from the brow of the hill,
Has the River, the valley, “The Island” in view—
(O! if mem’ry’s bright search-light could give it to you,
And you, with my childhood’s own vision, could see
The love-lighted beauty, that glowed there for me!)
While eastward the valley-farms glint thro’ the trees,
Whose grandeur had saved them to the thither-most shore,
And hills, as a back ground of beauty for these,
A richly-robed forest in stateliness bore;
And this, to my child fancy, held up the skies
Where the dawn, stealing in thro’ their bright rosy dyes,
Peeped in at my window to waken me when
The sun-gleams, aflash in the dew-spangled glen,
Out rivaled Golconda in jewels and gold—
When lambkins went frolicking down from the fold
To nip the soft grass or to drink from the brook—Ah,
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there was a spot, just beyond where they drank,
Where the brook cut the hill for its opposite bank,
And nestled above was a shadowy nook
With a rustic root-bench which a wind-warring tree
Had thrown out to anchor its hold on the hill:
There, glad as the laughter of innocent glee,
Came the musical tinkle and play of the rill,
A melody sweet, to that ærie of mine,
Where, safe from intrusion as cliff dweller, I
Heard, fresh from her lips, Nature’s message divine,
Told sweetly, thro’ beauties, of earth and the sky.
An old fallen tree made a foot-bridge across
That led to this hiding—this sanctum of mine.
Bright fern fringes bordered its soft rug of moss—
A wild grape had thatched with a clambering vine
That hid for my coming bright sparkles of dew.
O, bower of beauty, so temptingly cool!
’Twas the home of the fairies and they only knew
The hours spent there that were stolen from school.
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The brook-bordered fields of that moderate farm
Had each, for my heart, individual charm.—
The skies that bent over had glories unknown
To all other lands, even Italy’s own.
More golden its sunsets than any since seen:—
Its shadowy woodland, so rich in its green,
Had springs purling down in a dusky ravine:
There oft at the fount, where the waters distilled,
My leaf-fashioned cup I have held to be filled.
O, nectar twould be if again I could drink
Of the sparkles that fell there like pearls from its brink,
As it tinkled down sweetly from its rock-basined source
To join with its peers in their river-ward course.
In those shadowy depths, hid away from the world,
Most delicate forms of the fronds were uncurled:
Spring-beauties, anemonies, clematis white,
With violets, bluebells and maiden-hair fern,—
There were some of them ever to keep the spot bright,
To waft me good-bye and to greet my return.
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Then the hillside, our play-ground—I never can tell
Its riches of beauty in bower and dell.
The sunrise would kiss with its first ruddy glow
Then slip to the river that murmured below
And lighting its ripples with flashes of gold
It made all the valley a joy to behold.
That River! It ever kept time with my heart,—
Grew into my soul, of my life was a part.
It echoed my laughter, was sad when I wept—
When drowsy it lulled me with song till I slept.—
’Twas playmate and teacher, companion and friend,
From the “deep-hole” that mirrored the trees at “the bend”
To that spot of enchantment, where the willows bent low
To whisper their love. There the river went slow
As if hushing its wonted, wild, rollicking flow
To linger and listen—the story, so sweet,
’Twould have all the zephyr-swayed branches repeat.
But the loveliest view from the home on the hill—
The one that could ever enrapture and thrill,
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Was a calm summer eve with the stars beaming thro’
From the unclouded depths of the fathomless blue,—
“The city of God” filling vastness above,
Each mansion aglow with the light of His love.
Enhancing the beauty a broad, rising moon,
That followed a day with a languorous noon—
A day that in going left the sun-door ajar,
When a breeze, that was born of a rain-cloud afar,
Had stolen thro, softly, with the great evening star,
And whispered a vow to the languishing flowers
To bring them, ere morning, refreshing in showers.
Then the murmur of waters—the ripple in view,
The robings of Nature, aglitter with dew,
The sway of the trees, and the rose-petals strewn—
The kiss of the breeze, that has breath of the June.
Just sit in our group on the balcony there
And dream of this scene, inexpressibly fair
(Remember this gable looks square at the noon):
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How the gateways of glory thrown wide by the moon
Could pour their white floods on the beautiful scene—
What charm in the mingling of shadow and sheen!
The river went north in its tortuous trend
And wound thro’ the valley with many a bend.
This lake-like expanse, deep and smoothe, as you see,
Lying right in the pathway, ’tween Luna and me,
On an evening like this seemed a great burnished glass.
The Island shore here, had a margin of grass—
The round little cove cutting into its edge
Grew ferns on its banks and was dotted with sedge.
In the far-reaching shadows of lofty old trees
This part of the Island was hid from the noon;
Its quiet invited to slumberous ease;
Here the River flowed gently as Afton or Doon.
Kind Nature had woven a pleachy thick screen
Of forest and vines that were standing between,
And made this remote from the town and its mills.
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The zephyr-stirred leaves with their mystical chant—
That soft, lulling murmur, that muffles and stills—
Hushed the tumult and jar of the noisy “old plant”
And made this a spot ever calm and serene,
Fit temple for worship, embosomed in green.
Here, the river seemed charmed by some mythical lore—
It loitered along, seemed reluctant to pass,
While eddying wavelets crept up on the shore
And kissed, with their cool lips, the velvety grass.
On, slowly it flows until reaching a place
Where a glimpse may be caught of the swift running “Race;”
There it breaks into foam with a current so wild—
They rush to the meeting like mother and child.
With a plaint in its story that the mother-stream thrills,
Race babbles and tells how it toiled at the mills—Was
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prisonned and held, by the strength of the flume—
Was power that wrought on the spindle and loom.
Received in her bosom with loving embrace
They mingle their songs, then, the River and Race,
Delighting us all with their musical tones,
While silver-capped ripples go dancing o’er stones.
Aye, “Hill-crest” had beauty beyond all compare,
But words can ne’er picture how wondrously fair
For one whose misfortune ’tis not to have seen
That river—that hillside—the trees in their green—
Heard the music of waters, o’er pebbles at play,
Or, lapping ’mong rocks and then swirling away—
The brook leaping down to be lost in the stream
As womanhood merges our girl-hood’s young dream—If
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her childhood’s bare feet have ne’er pressed that cool sod
Where first I loved Nature, thro’ Nature her God.
