 | Poems by John Howard Bryant |  |
9
THE TRAVELLER'S RETURN.
I stood upon an airy height, in summer verdure drest;Tall trees, the elders of the wood, rose o'er me to the west.
A lovely vale before me lay, and on the golden air
Crept the blue smoke, in quiet trains, from roofs that clustered there.
I saw where, in my early days, I passed the pleasant hours
Beside the winding brook that still went prattling to its flowers;
And, still around my parent's home, the slender poplars grew,
Whose glossy leaves were swayed and turned by every wind that blew.
The clover with its heavy bloom was tossing in the gale,
And the tall crowfoot's yellow stars still sprinkled all the vale;
The forests stood as freshly green and stretched as far away,
And still upon the orchard ground, the same round shadows lay.
10
The brook still purled from woody glen, o'er which the wild vine swung.
I lingered till the crimson clouds, upon the evening sky,
O'erhung the hills as gloriously as in the days gone by.
All these are what they were when first these pleasant hills I ranged,
But faces that I knew before, by time and toil are changed;
Where youth and bloom were on the cheek, and gladness on the brow,
I only meet the marks of care and pain and sorrow now.
| Poems by John Howard Bryant | |