I.
I remember roaming lonely by the mournful forest streams,
The loveliness and melody of childhood’s happy dreams;
Pale flowers, the vermeil-tinted, lightly fanned by vernal breeze,
Whose fitful breath went sighingly among the solemn trees;
Sunny streamlets, gushing clearly in their fresh and tameless glee,
Sparkling onward, ever onward, toward a golden summer sea.
Fairy isles of green were sleeping on its softly-heaving breast,
Where the chime of waves low rippling forever lulled to rest.
The slanting sunbeams wandered through each quiet vale and dell,