How brightly on your vision, first The pictured vales and woodlands burst,— The lakelets set like twinkling gems Along the prairies’ pleated hems,— The silver crooks and rippled sweeps Of happy rivers here and there, And many a waterfall that leaps In rainbow garlands through the air,— The skirted maples and the groves Of oak the mild home-spirit loves— Enameled plains and crenelled hills And tangled skeins of brooks and rills,— Imperial forests of the fir, All redolent of musk and myrrh, That fling and furl their banners old, And still their gloomy secret hold As Time his cloudy censer fills. · · · · · Where the foothills are wedded to the meadow In the dimples that dally and pass And the oak swings an indolent shadow On the daisies that dial the grass.— In the crescents of rivers; in hollows Red-lipped in the strawberry time, And the slope where the forests half follows, A brooklet’s melodious rhyme,— On the sun-rippled knolls, and the prairies, Beloved of the wandering kine— In the skirts of the woodland the fairies Embroidered with rose and with vine— There’s a tent, and a smoke that is curling Above in the beautiful dome, Like a guardian spirit unfurling Soft wings o’er the temple of home. And the ax of the woodman is ringing All day in sylvestrian halls, Where the chipmunk is playfully springing And the blue-jay discordantly calls; And the red chips are fitfully flying On the asters that sprinkle the moss; Where the beauty of summer is dying, And the sun lances glimmer across; There’s a bird that is spectrally knocking, On a pine that is withered and bare, For the fir-top is trembling and rocking, In the blue of the clear upper air— There’s a crackling of fiber—the crashing Of a century crushed at a blow, And the fir-trees are wringing and lashing Their hands in a frenzy of woe!