Poems (Denver)/Inquiries

by Mary Caroline Denver

INQUIRIES.

Thy glance is on the mountain,
 Thy foot is on the earth;
Thy thoughts are wandering through the vales
 That bound thy place of birth.
The scenes of other years are spread
 Before thee even now;
Though the hopes of bygone years are fled
 Forever from thy brow.

Tell me, my brother! tell me,
 Is all as fair as when
Our feet went tripping o'er the fields
 And through the woodland glen?
Dost thou hear the wild bird's melody
 With the joyousness of yore;
Or have these feelings left the heart,
 To people it no more?

They would tell of many a pleasure.
 Seized with a careless hand;
They would tell of many a blessed hour
 Passed in thy mother-land.
Of many a hope born in a heart
 Where inexperience reigned,
Of many a wayward wish withheld,
 Of much more lost than gained!

I see a glow of beauty
 Upon the lofty hills;
I hear the voice-like melodies
 Of a thousand mountain-rills;
The laughter and the joyous shout
 Are brightly floating by,
Like sunny clouds that drift about
 Upon a summer sky!

Tell me, my brother! tell me,
 Does the freshness of our youth
Still linger on the green hill-side,
 Immaculate as its truth?
Or where bright water gushes glad
 The frowning rocks between;
Or where the stately pine is clad
 In everlasting green?

Where is the early spirit
 That made our being fair?
We feel it not within our hearts,
 For they are chilled with care.
We see not on each other's brow
 The images it cast;
Dimly it haunts our memory now,
 That spectre of the past.

Around the scenes of childhood,
 Its holiest light is shed;
Forever will it linger there,
 Like love beside the dead;
And glimpses of its beauty come
 Before me fleet and fast,
Hovering o'er childhood's broken tomb,
 Companions of the past!