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| WHERE were the pathways that your childhood knew?— | |
| In mountain glens? or by the ocean strands? | |
| Or where, beyond the ripening harvest lands, | |
| The distant hills were blue? | |
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| Where evening sunlight threw a golden haze | 5 |
| Over a mellow city’s walls and towers? | |
| Or where the fields and lanes were bright with flowers, | |
| In quiet woodland ways? | |
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| And whether here or there, or east or west, | |
| That place you dwelt in first was holy ground; | 10 |
| Its shelter was the kindest you have found, | |
| Its pathways were the best. | |
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| And even in the city’s smoke and mire | |
| I doubt not that a golden light was shed | |
| On those first paths, and that they also led | 15 |
| To lands of heart’s desire. | |
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| And where the children in dark alleys penn’d, | |
| Heard the caged lark sing of the April hills, | |
| Or where they damm’d the muddy gutter rills, | |
| Or made a dog their friend; | 20 |
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| Or where they gather’d, dancing hand in hand, | |
| About the organ man, for them, too, lay | |
| Beyond the dismal alley’s entrance way, | |
| The gates of wonderland. | |
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| For ’tis my faith that Earth’s first words are sweet | 25 |
| To all her children,—never a rebuff; | |
| And that we only saw, where ways were rough, | |
| The flowers about our feet. | |
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