While we enjoy a lingering ray,
     Ye still o’ertop the western day,
     Reposing yonder on God’s croft
     Like solid stacks of hay;
     So bold a line as ne’er was writ
     On any page by human wit;
     The forest glows as if
     An enemy’s camp-fires shone
     Along the horizon,
     Or the day’s funeral pyre
     Were lighted there;
     Edged with silver and with gold,
     The clouds hang o’er in damask fold,
     And with such depth of amber light
     The west is dight,
     Where still a few rays slant,
     That even Heaven seems extravagant. 
     Watatic Hill
     Lies on the horizon’s sill
     Like a child’s toy left overnight,
     And other duds to left and right,
     On the earth’s edge, mountains and trees
     Stand as they were on air graven,
     Or as the vessels in a haven
     Await the morning breeze. 
     I fancy even
     Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;
     And yonder still, in spite of history’s page,
     Linger the golden and the silver age;
     Upon the laboring gale
     The news of future centuries is brought,
     And of new dynasties of thought,
     From your remotest vale.

     But special I remember thee,
     Wachusett, who like me
     Standest alone without society. 
     Thy far blue eye,
     A remnant of the sky,
     Seen through the clearing or the gorge,
     Or from the windows of the forge,
     Doth leaven all it passes by. 
     Nothing is true
     But stands ’tween me and you,
     Thou western pioneer,
     Who know’st not shame nor fear,
     By venturous spirit driven
     Under the eaves of heaven;
     And canst expand thee there,
     And breathe enough of air? 
     Even beyond the West
     Thou migratest,
     Into unclouded tracts,
     Without a pilgrim’s axe,
     Cleaving thy road on high
     With thy well-tempered brow,
     And mak’st thyself a clearing in the sky. 
     Upholding heaven, holding down earth,
     Thy pastime from thy birth;
     Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,
     May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded the western horizon, though not without misgivings that thereafter no visible fairy-land would exist for us.  But it would be long to tell of our adventures, and we have no time this afternoon, transporting ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua valley, to go over again that pilgrimage.  We have since made many similar excursions to the principal mountains of New England and New York, and even far in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the summit of many of them.  And now, when we look again westward from our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have retreated once more among the blue and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, where we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled our hasty-pudding amid the clouds.