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 æons 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.