Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another companion, I have crossed the broad valley of the Nashua, over which we had so long looked westward from the Concord hills without seeing it to the blue mountains in the horizon.  So many streams, so many meadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men had lain concealed between us and those Delectable Mountains;—­from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsborough you may get a good view of them.  There where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our youthful eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon, lay the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was even then winding at its bottom, and then, as now, it was here silently mingling its waters with the Merrimack.  The clouds which floated over its meadows and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand evening skies for us.  But as it were, by a turf wall this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those hills it was first gradually revealed to us.  Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers.  Standing on the Concord Cliffs we thus spoke our mind to them:—­

     With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
     With grand content ye circle round,
     Tumultuous silence for all sound,
     Ye distant nursery of rills,
     Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;—­
     Firm argument that never stirs,
     Outcircling the philosophers,—­
     Like some vast fleet,
     Sailing through rain and sleet,
     Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat;
     Still holding on upon your high emprise,
     Until ye find a shore amid the skies;
     Not skulking close to land,
     With cargo contraband,
     For they who sent a venture out by ye
     Have set the Sun to see
     Their honesty. 
     Ships of the line, each one,
     Ye westward run,
     Convoying clouds,
     Which cluster in your shrouds,
     Always before the gale,
     Under a press of sail,
     With weight of metal all untold,—­
     I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,
     Immeasurable depth of hold,
     And breadth of beam, and length of running gear

     Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure
     In your novel western leisure;
     So cool your brows and freshly blue,
     As Time had naught for ye to do;
     For ye lie at your length,
     An unappropriated strength,
     Unhewn primeval timber,
     For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;
     The stock of which new earths are made,
     One day to be our western trade,
     Fit for the stanchions of a world
     Which through the seas of space is hurled.