After so many hard and struggling years;
Back to the old home, the old home in the mountains,
In the valley of childhood;
And I say to myself, again and again I say:
There's no place like the old place!
II
Here once more I wander, here, in the valley of brooks,
I wander a stranger—where every spring and tree and rock is familiar.
The little brooks tinkle down, with the old music, through the pine-darkened gorges;
The brooks that sometimes run dry, or hide under the smooth stones;
In the time of fullness leaping from ledge to ledge down to the big brook that never dries;
Where the trout dartle and the pools are shadowy and cool
And good to the hot body of a boy.
Lovely, with an intimate loveliness, is the valley,
And again and again I chant to myself:
O, there's no place like the old place!
III
There's no place like the old place!
Strangely nearer seem the walls of the valley,
Tho' far and spacious as ever the mysterious sunset.
Never before have I felt so intensely the beauty of it all—
How well-shaped the double valley;
The upper valley like a great, green bowl,
And the lower valley opening out toward the sunset like a trumpet;
The mountains embowered with evergreens, and maples, and chestnuts—
