"And on the morrow morn I bade adieu
To the old cottage home I loved so well--
The dear old cottage home where I was born.
Then from my mother's grave I plucked a rose
Bursting in bloom--Pauline had planted it--
And left my little hill-girt boyhood world.
I journeyed eastward to my journey's end;
At first by rail for many a flying mile,
By mail-coach thence from where the hurrying train
Leaps a swift river that goes tumbling on
Between a village and a mountain-ledge,
Chafing its rocky banks. There seethes and foams
The restless river round the roaring rocks,
And then flows on a little way and pours
Its laughing waters into a bridal lap.
Its flood is fountain-fed among the hills;
Far up the mossy brooks the timid trout
Lie in the shadow of vine-tangled elms.
Out from the village-green the roadway leads
Along the river up between the hills,
Then climbs a wooded mountain to its top,
And gently winds adown the farther side
Unto a valley where the bridal stream
Flows rippling, meadow-flower-and-willow-fringed,
And dancing onward with a merry song,
Hastes to the nuptials. From the mountain-top--
A thousand feet above the meadowy vale--
She seems a chain of fretted silver wound
With artless art among the emerald hills.
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