One sharp, tall peak above them all
    Clear into sunlight sprang
I saw the river of my dreams,
    The mountains that I sang!

No clue of memory led me on,
    But well the ways I knew;
A feeling of familiar things
    With every footstep grew.

Not otherwise above its crag
    Could lean the blasted pine;
Not otherwise the maple hold
    Aloft its red ensign.

So up the long and shorn foot-hills
    The mountain road should creep;
So, green and low, the meadow fold
    Its red-haired kine asleep.

The river wound as it should wind;
    Their place the mountains took;
The white torn fringes of their clouds
    Wore no unwonted look.

Yet ne’er before that river’s rim
    Was pressed by feet of mine,
Never before mine eyes had crossed
    That broken mountain line.

A presence, strange at once and known,
    Walked with me as my guide;
The skirts of some forgotten life
    Trailed noiseless at my side.

Was it a dim-remembered dream?
    Or glimpse through ions old?
The secret which the mountains kept
    The river never told.

But from the vision ere it passed
    A tender hope I drew,
And, pleasant as a dawn of spring,
    The thought within me grew,

That love would temper every change,
    And soften all surprise,
And, misty with the dreams of earth,
    The hills of Heaven arise.