My heart was like the summer lake,
A mirror in some valley found,
Whose depths a mimic world can make
More beautiful than that around.
The wood, the slope, the rocky dell,
To others dear, were dearer yet
To me; for they would fondly dwell
Mirrored in memory; and set
In the deep azure of my dreams
At night, how sweet they rose to view!
How soft the echo, and the streams,
How swift their laughing murmurs flew!
And when the vision broke at morn,
The music in my charmed ear,
As of some fairy's lingering horn,--
My native hills, how soft, how dear!


VIII.

"So passed my boyhood; 'twas a stream
Of frolic flow, 'mid Nature's bowers;
A ray of light--a golden dream--
A morning fair--a path of flowers!
But now another charm came o'er me:
The ocean I had never seen;
Yet suddenly it rolled before me,
With all its crested waves of green!
Soft sunny islands, far and lone,
Where the shy petrel builds her nest;