The Muskingum Valley!—How longin’ the gaze
A feller throws back on its long summer days,
When the smiles of its blossoms and my smiles wuz one-
And-the-same, from the rise to the set o’ the sun:
Wher’ the hills sloped as soft as the dawn down to noon,
And the river run by like an old fiddle-tune,
And the hours glided past as the bubbles ’ud glide,
All so loaferin’-like, ’long the path o’ the tide.
In the Muskingum Valley—it ’peared-like the skies
Looked lovin’ on me as my own mother’s eyes,
While the laughin’-sad song of the stream seemed to be
Like a lullaby angels was wastin’ on me—
Tel, swimmin’ the air, like the gossamer’s thread,
’Twixt the blue underneath and the blue overhead,
My thoughts went astray in that so-to-speak realm
Wher’ Sleep bared her breast as a piller fer them.
In the Muskingum Valley, though far, far away,
I know that the winter is bleak there to-day—
No bloom ner perfume on the brambles er trees—
Wher’ the buds ust to bloom, now the icicles freeze.—
That the grass is all hid ’long the side of the road
Wher’ the deep snow has drifted and shifted and blowed—
And I feel in my life the same changes is there,—
The frost in my heart, and the snow in my hair.
But, Muskingum Valley! my memory sees
Not the white on the ground, but the green in the trees—
Not the froze’-over gorge, but the current, as clear
And warm as the drop that has jes trickled here;
Not the choked-up ravine, and the hills topped with snow,
But the grass and the blossoms I knowed long ago
When my little bare feet wundered down wher’ the stream
In the Muskingum Valley flowed on like a dream.