The river hemmed with leaning trees <br />Wound through its meadows green; <br />A low, blue line of mountains showed <br />The open pines between. <br /> <br />One sharp, tall peak above them all <br />Clear into sunlight sprang <br />I saw the river of my dreams, <br />The mountains that I sang! <br /> <br />No clue of memory led me on, <br />But well the ways I knew; <br />A feeling of familiar things <br />With every footstep grew. <br /> <br />Not otherwise above its crag <br />Could lean the blasted pine; <br />Not otherwise the maple hold <br />Aloft its red ensign. <br /> <br />So up the long and shorn foot-hills <br />The mountain road should creep; <br />So, green and low, the meadow fold <br />Its red-haired kine asleep. <br /> <br />The river wound as it should wind; <br />Their place the mountains took; <br />The white torn fringes of their clouds <br />Wore no unwonted look. <br /> <br />Yet ne'er before that river's rim <br />Was pressed by feet of mine, <br />Never before mine eyes had crossed <br />That broken mountain line. <br /> <br />A presence, strange at once and known, <br />Walked with me as my guide; <br />The skirts of some forgotten life <br />Trailed noiseless at my side. <br /> <br />Was it a dim-remembered dream? <br />Or glimpse through ions old? <br />The secret which the mountains kept <br />The river never told. <br /> <br />But from the vision ere it passed <br />A tender hope I drew, <br />And, pleasant as a dawn of spring, <br />The thought within me grew, <br /> <br />That love would temper every change, <br />And soften all surprise, <br />And, misty with the dreams of earth, <br />The hills of Heaven arise.<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-mystery-6/
