I love to muse these pensive days,
The Indian summer through,
And climb the hills and tread the ways
In boyhood's haunts anew.
A thousand voices of the air,
The sea, the earth, the sky,
Enchanting whisper to me there,
Like spirits from on high.
The falling leaves speak mournfully,
The fading flowers sigh;
The sea pours forth grand minstrelsy,
Benignant smiles the sky.
The beauteous hills bedeck themselves
In scarlet, gray and gold;
Green laurel droops and ivy clings
O'er cragged rocks and old.
The mountains rise in grandeur up
Above the ocean's beds,
And sombre clouds their curtains loop
In beauty round their heads.
The birds ring out their parting songs,
The brooks run laughing by,
The squirrels in the chestnut woods
Gather their stores on high.
The speckled trout and darting pike
In shallow waters spawn;
The bobolink's metallic notes
Are tinkling in the lawn.
The farmer in the orchard shakes
The golden apples down,
Or in the meadow ample ricks
Of gathered hay will crown.
The partridge on his drumming log
The listening sportsman hears;
And lo! a musket's sharp report,
Resounding, strikes my ears.
I see and hear all these, and more,
Through autumn's dreamy haze,
And long to drop the added years
Since childhood's happy days.
