O! golden dawning of a day of storms, That fell ere noontide into rayless night! O! beautiful initial, vermeil-flowered, And bright with cherub-eyes and effigies, To the black-letter volume of my life! O! faëry gateway, gilt and garlanded, And shining in the sun, to gloomy groves Of shadowy cypress, and to sunless streams, Feeding with bane the deadly nightshade's roots,-- To vexing labyrinths of doubt and fear, And deep abysses of despair and death! Back to thy peaceful villages and fields, My memory, like a weary pilgrim, comes With scrip and burdon, to repose awhile,-- To pluck a daisy from a lonely grave Where long ago, in common sepulture, I laid my mother and my faith in God; To fix the record of a single day So memorably wonderful and sweet Its power of inspiration lingers still,-- So full of her dear presence, so divine With the melodious breathing of her words, And the warm radiance of her loving smile, That tears fall readily as April rain At its recall; to pass in swift review The years of adolescence, and the paths Of glare and gloom through which, by passion led I reached the fair possession of my power, And won the dear possession of my love, And then--farewell! Queen-village of the meads Fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned, With jewelled homes around her lifted brow, And coronal of ancient forest trees-- Northampton sits, and rules her pleasant realm. There where the saintly Edwards heralded The terrors of the Lord, and men bowed low Beneath the menace of his awful words; And there where Nature, with a thousand tongues Tender and true, from vale and mountain-top, And smiling streams, and landscapes piled afar, Proclaimed a gentler Gospel, I was born.