  I chanced to stroll not long ago To a green valley that you know; For everything about the town Was strange, and on me seemed to frown, And so I wandered off alone, To seek the friends from youth I’d known. The brook came dashing down the hill, The same old song to hum and trill; With glances shy and kisses sweet, It wound its ribbon at my feet, And laughed aloud at my delight— It was indeed a comic sight To see me o’er the brooklet bend, And greet again an old time friend. So thus I sat, perhaps an hour, Until I spied a human flower; A little maid it seemed to be With steps directed straight to me. Her dress was pink, her bonnet white. Her eyes were blue, and round, and bright, Some daisies in her hand she held But where they came from—would she tell? Were questions that my eyes portrayed, And she the answer quickly made. “Upon the hill-top high they grow, The path is there by which you go, But if you get them you must climb,” She said, unconscious of the rhyme. I glanced along the rocky ledge; The daisies nodded o’er the edge, And just as far as I could see They waved their ruffled caps to me. Bright eyes that never had grown old Their heart’s content to me foretold, And I resolved the path to try That seemed to end so near the sky; And so I started up alone, A way that seemed with mosses sown. A pond’rous clod rolled on the track, A briar reached and pulled me back, A lizzard on the pathway played, And half way up I paused—afraid. “Keep on,” the little girl replied, “A better path is near your side.” She pulled the thorn from off my gown, I heard the clod go plunging down, And then she clasped with mine her hand, And led me up to “daisy-land.” The hours we spent together there Were hallowed as the hours of prayer, And when she left me in the vale The sunlight suddenly grew pale; But she had taught me this strange truth, Forgot, or never learned in youth, It seems a little song in rhyme, “To reach the daisies, you must climb.” Bardstown, Ky. |
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