“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. 
Thence up a winding valley of grand views—­
Hill-guarded—­firs and rocks upon the hills,
And here and there a solitary pine
Majestic—­silent—­mourns its slaughtered kin,
Like the last warrior of some tawny tribe
Returned from sunset mountains to behold
Once more the spot where his brave fathers sleep. 
The farms along the valley stretch away
On either hand upon the rugged hills—­
Walled into fields.  Tall elms and willow-trees
Huge-trunked and ivy-hung stand sentinel
Along the roadway walls—­storm-wrinkled trees
Planted by men who slumber on the hills. 
Amid such scenes all day we rolled along,
And as the shadows of the western hills
Across the valley crept and climbed the slopes,
The sunset blazed their hazy tops and fell
Upon the emerald like a mist of gold. 
And at that hour I reached my journey’s end. 
The village is a gem among the hills—­
Tall, towering hills that reach into the blue. 
One grand old mountain-cone looms on the left
Far up toward heaven, and all around are hills. 
The river winds among the leafy hills
Adown the meadowy dale; a shade of elms
And willows fringe it.  In this lap of hills
Cluster the happy homes of men content
To let the great world worry as it will. 
The court-house park, the broad, bloom-bordered streets,
Are avenues of maples and of elms—­
Grander than Tadmor’s pillared avenue—­
Fair as the fabled garden of the gods. 
Beautiful villas, tidy cottages,
Flower gardens, fountains, offices and shops,
All nestle in a dreamy wealth of woods.