I stand upon my native hills again, <br />Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky <br />With garniture of waving grass and grain, <br />Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie, <br />While deep the sunless glens are scooped between, <br />Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen. <br /> <br />A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near, <br />And ever restless feet of one, who, now, <br />Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year; <br />There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow, <br />As breaks the varied scene upon her sight, <br />Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light. <br /> <br />For I have taught her, with delighted eye, <br />To gaze upon the mountains,--to behold, <br />With deep affection, the pure ample sky, <br />And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,-- <br />To love the song of waters, and to hear <br />The melody of winds with charmed ear. <br /> <br />Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat, <br />Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air; <br />And, where the season's milder fervours beat, <br />And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear <br />The song of bird, and sound of running stream, <br />Am come awhile to wander and to dream. <br /> <br />Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, <br />In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. <br />The maize leaf and the maple bough but take, <br />From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. <br />The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, <br />Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away. <br /> <br />The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all <br />The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time, <br />He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall, <br />He seems the breath of a celestial clime! <br />As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow <br />Health and refreshment on the world below.<br /><br />William Cullen Bryant<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-on-revisiting-the-country/
