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AMONG THE GREEN HILLS OF ADAIR.

1.

How oft in the spirit we yearn
For faces and forms that have fled!
While the calm lights of memory burn,
How oft from the living we turn
To the dead!
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So my thoughts now go wandering back,
O'er a quiet and shadowy track,
Till they rest by a murmuring stream,
Where in years gone I dream'd a sweet dream,
Among the green hills of Adair—
The beautiful hills of Adair.

2.

And a maiden, as sweet as the flowers
That bloom'd by that murmuring stream,
Walk'd beside me among the wild bowers,
Through the months, and the days, and the hours,
Of that dream.
But a messenger cruel as Death
Broke in on that dream, and her breath
Pass'd away with a prayer and a sigh,
As that murmuring stream glided by,
Among the green hills of Adair—
The beautiful hills of Adair.

3.

But I wander there yet, and I hear
The tones of that murmuring stream;
And the form and the face that were dear,
In the beauty of youth re-appear;
And I dream—
Oh, I dream of a Land and a Life,
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Lying far beyond earth and its strife,
Wherein, not again to be cross'd,
I shall find the sweet spirit I lost
Among the green hills of Adair—
The beautiful hills of Adair.

VII.

The refrain had scarce died to a murmur,
When a woman well stricken in years,
Sang the song of Lynn's Station on Beargrass,
In tones that brought many to tears:—
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