The Hills Of Wayne Poem by Mary Ashley Townsend

Ye hills of Wayne! Ye Hills of Wayne!
In dreams I see your slopes again;
In dreams my childish feet explore,
Your daisied dells beloved of yore;
In dreams with eager feet I press
Far up your heights of loveliness.
And stand a glad-eyed girl again,
Upon the happy hills of Wayne.

I see once more the glad sunrise
Break on the World's awakening eyes;
I see once more the tender corn,
Shake out its banners to the morn,
I see the sleepy valleys kissed,
And robbed of all their robes and mist,
And laughing day is queen again,
Of all the verdant hills of Wayne.

I bind about my childish brow
The bloomy thorn-tree's scented snow;
I see upon the fading flowers,
The fatal finger of the hours!
I see the distant village spire,
Catch on its tip a star of fire,
As in my dreams the sun again
Goes down behind the hills of Wayne.

The cowboy's coaxing call across
The meadow comes: 'Co' boss, co'boss'.
And milky odered cattle lift,
Their hoofs among the daisy drift-
The day is over all too soon
And up the sky the haunted moon
Glides with its ghost and bends again,
Above the wooded hills of Wayne.

Oh! I have laughed in many a land;
And I have sighed on many a strand;
And lonely beach where written be
The solemn scriptures of the sea;
And I have climbed the grandest heights
The moon of midnight ever lights;
But memory turned from all again
To kneel upon the hills of Wayne.

Ye hills of Wayne! Ye hills of Wayne!
Ye woods, ye vales, ye fields of grain!
Ye scented morns, ye blue-eyed noons!
Ye ever unforgotten moons!
No matter where my latest breath
Shall freeze beneath the kiss of death.
May some one bear me back again
To sleep among the hills of Wayne.