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| I STAND upon my native hills again, | |
| Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky, | |
| With garniture of waving grass and grain, | |
| Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie; | |
| While deep the sunless glens are scooped between, | 5 |
| Where brawl o’er shallow beds the streams unseen. | |
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| A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near, | |
| And ever restless feet of one, who, now, | |
| Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year; | |
| There plays a gladness o’er her fair young brow, | 10 |
| As breaks the varied scene upon her sight, | |
| Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light. | |
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| For I have taught her, with delighted eye, | |
| To gaze upon the mountains,—to behold | |
| With deep affection the pure ample sky, | 15 |
| And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,— | |
| To love the song of waters, and to hear | |
| The melody of winds with charméd ear. | |
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| Here I have ’scaped the city’s stifling heat, | |
| Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air; | 20 |
| And, where the season’s milder fervors beat, | |
| And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear | |
| The song of bird, and sound of running stream, | |
| Am come awhile to wander and to dream. | |
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| Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, | 25 |
| In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. | |
| The maize leaf and the maple bough but take, | |
| From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. | |
| The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, | |
| Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away. | 30 |
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| The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all | |
| The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time, | |
| He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall, | |
| He seems the breath of a celestial clime! | |
| As if from heaven’s wide-open gates did flow | 35 |
| Health and refreshment on the world below. | |
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