Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

A MYSTERY.

     The river hemmed with leaning trees
     Wound through its meadows green;
     A low, blue line of mountains showed
     The open pines between.

     One sharp, tall peak above them all
     Clear into sunlight sprang
     I saw the river of my dreams,
     The mountains that I sang!

     No clue of memory led me on,
     But well the ways I knew;
     A feeling of familiar things
     With every footstep grew.

     Not otherwise above its crag
     Could lean the blasted pine;
     Not otherwise the maple hold
     Aloft its red ensign.

     So up the long and shorn foot-hills
     The mountain road should creep;
     So, green and low, the meadow fold
     Its red-haired kine asleep.

     The river wound as it should wind;
     Their place the mountains took;
     The white torn fringes of their clouds
     Wore no unwonted look.

     Yet ne'er before that river's rim
     Was pressed by feet of mine,
     Never before mine eyes had crossed
     That broken mountain line.

     A presence, strange at once and known,
     Walked with me as my guide;
     The skirts of some forgotten life
     Trailed noiseless at my side.

     Was it a dim-remembered dream?
     Or glimpse through aeons old?
     The secret which the mountains kept
     The river never told.

     But from the vision ere it passed
     A tender hope I drew,
     And, pleasant as a dawn of spring,
     The thought within me grew,

     That love would temper every change,
     And soften all surprise,
     And, misty with the dreams of earth,
     The hills of Heaven arise.

     1873.