In many a mountain fastness— By many a river’s foam, And through the gorgeous cities, ’Twas loneliness to roam, For the sweetest music in my heart Was the olden songs of home!
Ah! glen, and foaming brooklet, And friends, have vanished now! The balmy Styrian breezes Are blowing on my brow, And sounds again the cuckoo’s call From the forest’s inmost bough.
Veiled is the heart’s glad vision— The wings of Fancy fold; I rise and journey onward. Through valleys green and old, Where the far, white Alps reveal the morn And keep the sunset’s gold!
Sun of the new-born year! I hail thy light; As bursting through the dark clouds that so long Had veiled the glories of each morn and night, Thou pourest over all thy radiance strong; Bidding the chilling rains their fury cease, And smiling on the drenched and languid earth, That, all exulting in her glad release, Puts on the beauty of a second birth, And joys to greet thee. Type art thou, O Sun! Amid the parting clouds thy bright path making, Of that clear Star—the never setting One! That through the pall of darksome ages breaking, With healing beams, still moves, eternal on! And lights the living soul when life’s dim day is gone!
“Well, to _my_ mind, a nicer young man doesn’t live any where than Archie Harris. So pleasant spoken, so good tempered, so civil as he is. You ‘may go farther and fare worse,’ I can tell you, Sophy. It’s all very well for girls to be dainty and particular about looks, when they are young and handsome themselves, and think they may catch anybody, but it’s no joke for a girl to settle herself with a man who may be unkind to her by and bye. Archie Harris has that in him which will last in dark days as well as sunshine; something that wont wear out in old age, like your grandfather here, that I’ve lived with forty-five years come next Christmas, and found him just the same, winter and summer. So, as I said before, ‘you may go farther and fare worse,’ Sophy.” And having delivered her sentiments, old Mrs. Middleton took a pinch of snuff, drew her chair a little nearer the fire with an emphatic “hem,” and then resumed her knitting, while she glanced over her spectacles to observe what had been the effect of her speech upon her pretty granddaughter, who was seated on the opposite side of the little round table, engaged in sewing.