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 i 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. 
