All that I tell you now,
All that my white hairs know,
I learned on a tall hill’s brow,
I found out from the snow.
All that the years have tried,
All I am sure is true,
I heard at a river’s side
Or followed the river to.
And all that I hold by came
In a time of solitude,
On a day without a name,
At the heart of an ancient wood;
For unsuspected friends
Are met by a man alone.
The wind from the world’s ends,
The sky no wind has known;
And they taught me, long ago,
To ponder earth and all.
From a hill, on days of snow,
In a wood when the soft rains fall.
– T. Morris Longstreth, author of the 1918 classic “The Catskills.”