Let the classic pilgrim rove,
By Egeria's fount to stand,
Or sit in Vancluse's grot of love,
Afar from his native land;
Let him drink of the crystal tides
Of the far-famed Hippocrene,
Or list to the waves where Peneus glides
His storied mounts between:
But dearer than aught 'neath a foreign sky
Is the fount of my native dell,
It has fairer charms for my musing eye
For my heart a deeper spell.
Dear fount! what memories rush
Through the heart and wildered brain,
As beneath the old beech I list to the gush
Of thy sparkling waves again;
For here in a fairy dream
With friends, my childhood's hours
Glided on like the flow of thy beautiful stream,
And like it were wreathed with flowers:
Here we saw on thy waves, from the shade,
The dance of the sunbeams at noon;
Or heard, half-afraid, the deep murmurings made
In thy cavernous depths, 'neath the moon.
I have heard thy waves away
From thy scenes, dear fount, apart;
And have felt the play, in life's fevered day,
Of thy waters through my heart;
But oh! thou art not the same:
Youth's friends are gone--I am lone--
Thy beeches are carved with many a name
Now graved on the funeral stone.
As I stand and muse, my tears
Are troubling the stream whose waves
The lullaby sang to their infantile years,
And now murmur around their graves.