WYOMING.6
“Dites si la Nature n’a pas fait ce beau pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un St. Preux, mais ne les y cherchez pas.”
I.
hou com’st, in beauty, on my gaze at last,
“On Susquehanna’s side, fair Wyoming!”
Image of many a dream, in hours long past,
When life was in its bud and blossoming,
And waters, gushing from the fountain-spring
Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young eyes,
As by the poet borne, on unseen wing,
I breathed, in fancy, ’neath thy cloudless skies,
The summer’s air, and heard her echoed harmonies.
II.
I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,
In life, a vision of the brain no more.
I’ve stood upon the wooded mountain’s brow,
That beetles high thy lovely valley o’er;
And now, where winds thy river’s greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade,
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.