The River

[trailhead]

And I behold once more

My old familiar haunts; here the river blue.

The same blue wonder that my infant eye

Admired, sage doubting whence the traveler came-

Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed...

 

Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,

I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,

Much triumphing,---and these the fields

Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly...

 

Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;

These trees and stones are audible to me,

These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,

I understand their faery syllables,

And all their sad significance. The wind...

 

I feel as I were welcome to these trees

After long months of weary wandering,

Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;

They know me as their son, for side by side,

They were coeval with my ancestors;

Adorned with them my country's primitive times.

And soon may give my dust their funeral shade