The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-07-01


There lies valley far away,
So beautiful it seems,
The sunlight of the passing years
Has blended all its smiles and tears
In half-forgotten dreams.
The fragrance of sweet flowers blows
Across the shady lane,
And far atield mellow lark
Sings from the silent gathering dark
tender, gay refrain.
There, vagrant. looms the pink wild rose
Along the dusty way
Where bird aud bee and butterfly,
Lured by its perfume, linger nigh,
And wanton sunbeams stray.
Mayhap poet, roaming, goes
Beyond the gray foothills,
And, listening, tunes his minstrelsy
10 the iliusiT2 melody
That haunts the mourmous rils.
Or from the crowded citys throses
A painter strays afar
And catches half the peacefuness,
The hills low curying loneliness,
The glimmer of a star.
And this-his dream the poet knows
And this the painter sees.
A vision wrought in myriad years,
a valley fraught with smiles and tears
And thousand memories.
What is it lures the poet on?
What wakes his soul to song2
What WHITES the painters art,
Till meath its spell TO many heart
Forgotten memories throng!
Behind the song the poet sings
Back of the painters brush,
The power of genius. hidden, sleeps;
At Inspirations call it leaps
To life with dawn afush.
From hill to hill of life journey lies,
Passing from sunlit plains to Swallowed forest
ways
And looking backward we may see the skies
Touching the clear horizon of our childhood
days.
For childhoods memories ever brightest,
And still the fairest, shines our first life-star.
Still potently our youthful fancies call,
Still lures the vision beautiful of early days.
Again VIC hear, when twilight shadows fall
The tender cadence of a mothers slumber-lays-
And see the love-light in her shining eyes,
And, seeing, drift away to summer skies.
For whatsoever the coming years may bring
OF joys fulfilled of sorrow or of bitter wrong,
From out the land of memories will ring,
Still strong in faith that mothers prayerful
slumbeT-song
And though afar from childhood's realms
roam,
Some day-our hearts will turn again-toward
home
Toward home-the world our infancy knew,
Complete within itself, where love king
supreme;-
Where first we saw, afar within Life's blue,
The dawning vision and the glamor of the
dream
That still hangs star-like DER the future years.
Enshrining all our hopes, our joys, our fears.
Toward home where our sheltered infancy,
The strongest, truest, of Lfes inspirations
Who does not know the power of memory?
We lost the halowed peace of youth, but ne'er
forget:
The first short prayer learned at mothers knee,
In dying lips, may greet-Eternity.
Twelve years of life have come, have gone,
Since first from home, our footsteps turned,
And every year has brightly burned
A beacon light to guide us on,
From night to night, from dawn to dawn
And youthful hopes toward knowledge yearned
Each year the path has broader grown,
New hopes have risen to light the way,
New inspirations crowned each day.
We've climbed alone yet not alone
The kindest truest friends we've known,
Who've cheered our hearts with friendships raw.
Whose tender guiding hands have led
A little nearer Wsdom's height
In many an upward-winding flight
Who've shown to us the goal ahead,
And over all our souls love shed
a radiance caught from Faiths pure lips
The feeting days-the months, the years
Fond memories around them cling
Of school-day haunts, whose names may bring
Bright smiles to light the mist of tears,
How many mingled joys and fears
Adown their echoing Railways ring
A little while our paths may fall
In sunny ways meath peaceful skies
But will no reckoning star arise
Shall we not hear the great worlds call?
Today sweet memories enthrall-
What promise lights tomorrow's Skies
az
What feeling throng souls today
As from the path of life we've traced
In unison so long, we haste,
The deeps of thought no lips portray,
Vo+ fol, would ,ro ,,roSar1-o .,l1vo.-