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Like Mist on a Mountain Top Broken and Gray.
Like mist on a mountain top broken and gray,
The dream of my early day fleeted away:
Now the evening of life, with its shadows, steals on,
And memory reposes on years that are gone!
Wild youth with strange fruitage of errors and tears—
A midday of bliss and a midnight of fears—
Though chequer'd, and sad, and mistaken you've been,
Still love I to muse on the hours we have seen!
With those long-vanished hours fair visions are flown,
And the soul of the minstrel sinks pensive and lone;
In vain would I ask of the future to bring
The verdure that gladden'd my life in its spring!
I think of the glen where the hazel-nut grew—
The pine-covered hill where the heather-bell blew—
