Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! The moorland flower and peasant! How, at their mention, memory turns Her pages old and pleasant! The gray sky wears again its gold And purple of adorning, And manhood’s noonday shadows hold The dews of boyhood’s morning: The dews that washed the dust and soil From off the wings of pleasure, The sky that flecked the ground of toil With golden threads of leisure. I call to mind the summer day, The early harvest mowing, The sky with sun and clouds at play, And flowers with breezes blowing. I hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter’s horn, Old tunes my heart is playing. How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple’s shadow, And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow! Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping, The good dog listened while I read, And wagged his tail in keeping. I watched him while in sportive mood I read “_The Twa Dogs’_” story, And half believed he understood The poet’s allegory. Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing. New light on home-seen Nature beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common. I woke to find the simple truth Of fact and feeling better Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor: That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart In every tongue rehearsing. Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already? I saw through all familiar things The romance underlying; The joys and griefs that plume the wings Of Fancy skyward flying. I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even, That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon.