Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

New England: Woonsocket, R. I.

From Woonsocket Hill

By John L. Osborne

THE EARTH, this beautiful summer’s day,

Is in perfect tune with the blue of the sky,

And the fleecy white of the clouds that play

On the wings of the amorous zephyr’s sigh.

My errant fancy has led me here,

To the highest point of Woonsocket’s crest,

In this sweetest season of the year

When fields and woods are in verdure dressed.

I left the valley far, far behind,

As ever upward the pathway led,

Past gray stone-walls where the ivy twined,

And the elms a grateful coolness shed;

Past the farm-house old, ’neath the sycamore,

With its well-curb aged and moss o’ergrown,

And the broad flat stones before the door,

Wearing slow as the years have flown;

Till at last I have reached the highest peak

And before me the landscape stretches wide,

And eastward or westward the eye may seek

Yet find no bound to restrain its pride.

Southeastward a line of darker hue

Than the sky that meets it, far away,

Tells that there are dancing the wavelets blue

On the bosom of Narragansett Bay.

On the left Wachuset, showing dim

Through wreaths of vapor that round it fold,

Crowns with its dome the horizon’s rim,

Like some eastern temple, grand and old.

While nearer, along the valleys green,

Full many a village meets the eye,

And here and there the silver sheen

Of a brooklet mirrors the arching sky.

What pleasure it is to linger here,

Through the summer hours so warm and bright,

Watching the landscape, far and near,

Framed in the sunshine golden light!