Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

Introductory to New England

Vermont

By Julia C. R. Dorr (1825–1913)

BUT what to us are centuries dead,

And rolling years forever fled,

Compared with thee, O grand and fair

Vermont,—our goddess mother?

Strong with the strength of thy verdant hills,

Fresh with the freshness of mountain rills,

Pure as the breath of the fragrant pine,

Glad with the gladness of youth divine,

Serenely thou sittest throned to-day

Where the free winds that round thee play

Rejoice in thy wave of sun-bright hair,

O thou, our glorious mother!

Rejoice in thy beautiful strength and say,

Earth holds not such another!

Thou art not old with thy hundred years,

Nor worn with care, or toil, or tears,

But all the glow of the summer time

Is thine to-day in thy glorious prime!

Thy brow is fair as the winter snows,

With a stately calm in its still repose;

While the breath of the rose the wild bee sips,

Half mad with joy, cannot eclipse

The marvellous sweetness of thy lips;

And the deepest blue of the laughing skies

Hides in the depths of thy fearless eyes,

Gazing afar over land and sea

Wherever thy wandering children be!

Fold on fold,

Over thy form of grandest mould,

Floweth thy robe of forest green,

Now light, now dark, in its emerald sheen.

Its broidered hem is of wild-flowers rare,

With feathery fern-fronds light as air

Fringing its borders. In thy hair

Sprays of the pink arbutus twine,

And the curling rings of the wild grape-vine.

Thy girdle is woven of silver streams;

Its clasp with the opaline lustre gleams

Of a lake asleep in the sunset beams;

And, half concealing

And half revealing,

Floats over all a veil of mist

Pale tinted with rose and amethyst!