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The Mountain of the Lovers

with Poems of Nature and Tradition

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Dedication. TO MARGARET J. PRESTON, OF VIRGINIA.

Mine eyes have never gazed in thine,
Our hands are strangers; yet divine
The deathless sympathy which binds
Our hearts and minds!
Thou singest along the mountain side;
Thy golden songs are justified
By the rich music of their flow;
I sing below,
Where the lone pine-land airs are stirred
By notes of thrush and mocking bird;—
The heights befit thy loftier strain;
Mine courts the plain.

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And now, with joyous sylvan things
All round me, 'mid the flash of wings,
The rivulet's lapse, the breeze's play,
On this bright day,
Flushed like a Dryad's tender face
With early spring-time's happiest grace,
This day of soft harmonious hours,
Made sweet with flowers,
My lowland Muse is blithe to send
Fair greeting to her mountain friend,
And—yearning more for love than praise—
These wild-wood lays!