Ye children of the mountain, sing of your craggy peaks,
Your valleys forest laden, your cliffs where Echo speaks;
And ye, who by the prairies your childhood’s joys have seen,
Sing of your waving grasses, your velvet miles of green: 
But when my memory wanders down to the dear old home
I hear, amid my dreaming, the seething of the foam,
The wet wind through the pine trees, the sobbing crash and roar,
The mighty surge and thunder of the surf along the shore.

I see upon the sand-dunes the beach-grass sway and swing,
I see the whirling sea-birds sweep by on graceful wing,
I see the silver breakers leap high on shoal and bar,
And hear the bell-buoy tolling his lonely note afar. 
The green salt-meadows fling me their salty, sweet perfume,
I hear, through miles of dimness, the watchful fog-horn boom;
Once more, beneath the blackness of night’s great roof-tree high,
The wild geese chant their marches athwart the arching sky.

The dear old Cape!  I love it!  I love its hills of sand,
The sea-wind singing o’er it, the seaweed on its strand;
The bright blue ocean ’round it, the clear blue sky o’erhead;
The fishing boats, the dripping nets, the white sails filled and spread;—­
For each heart has its picture, and each its own home song,
The sights and sounds which move it when Youth’s fair memories throng;
And when, down dreamland pathways, a boy, I stroll once more,
I hear the mighty music of the surf along the shore.

* * * * *

AT EVENTIDE

The tired breezes are tucked to rest
  In the cloud-beds far away;
The waves are pressed to the placid breast
  Of the dreaming, gleaming bay;
The shore line swims in a hazy heat,
  Asleep in the sea and sky,
And the muffled beat where the breakers meet
  Is a soft, sweet lullaby.

The pine-clad hill has a crimson crown
  Of glittering sunset glows;
The roofs of brown in the distant town
  Are bathed in a blush of rose;
The radiant ripples shine and shift
  In shimmering shreds of gold;
The seaweeds lift and drowse and drift,
  And the jellies fill and fold.

The great sun sinks, and the gray fog heaps
  His cloak on the silent sea;
The night-wind creeps where the ocean sleeps,
  And the wavelets wake in glee;
Across the bay, like a silver star,
  There twinkles the harbor-light,
And faint and far from the outer bar
  The sea-birds call “Good-night.”

* * * * *

INDEX TO FIRST LINES

* * * * *

A cloud of cinder-dotted smoke, whose billows rise and swell

A solemn Sabbath stillness lies along the Mudville lanes

A stretch of hill and valley, swathed thick in robes of white