heart on many a dark night in winter, when the wind whistled and 

 shivered, and the shutters slammed against the house in dismal din. 

 And 1 have gathered golden-rod on the heights of Quebec, hard by 

 where brave Wolfe fell, and down the St. Lawrence toward the northern 

 sea, and on Mt. Desert Island, neighboring the rocky cliffs and melan- 

 choly pines, and beside beautiful Champlain and back in the Adiron- 

 dacks where the world seemed removed across some wide,. wide sea, and 

 in the Rockies where the continent billowed toward the skies, and the 

 crest forgot to sink, and along the Great Lakes where the billows call 

 like a sea, and on the fringe of the great desert with its parched lips and 

 cheeks where fever burns forever, and along the Wabash with its stately 

 tulip-trees and sycamores, beautiful as the pillars of the Parthenon, and 

 along the Sacramento as it widens seaward, beside the Potomac as it 

 stops a moment tenderly to lave the bank on whose sloping side Wash- 

 ington lies buried, and on the Hudson when the Palisades were all in 

 conflagration in autumn days, and on my own beloved prairies stretching 

 mile on mile through Indian summer haze so widely have I gathered 

 the golden-rod, and reverently hope I may be commissioned to gather 

 its golden sprays in heaven ; so shall I feel quite at home. 



