Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

Western States: Blue Lick Springs, Ky.

The Shadows in the Valley

By Henry Lynden Flash (1835?–1914)

THERE ’s a mossy, shady valley,

Where the waters wind and flow,

And the daisies sleep in winter,

’Neath a coverlid of snow;

And violets, blue-eyed violets,

Bloom in beauty in the spring,

And the sunbeams kiss the wavelets,

Till they seem to laugh and sing.

But in autumn, when the sunlight

Crowns the cedar-covered hill,

Shadows darken in the valley,

Shadows ominous and still;

And the yellow leaves like banners

Of an elfin-host that ’s fled,

Tinged with gold and royal purple,

Flutter sadly overhead.

And those shadows, gloomy shadows,

Like dim phantoms on the ground,

Stretch their dreamy lengths forever

On a daisy-covered mound.

And I loved her, yes, I loved her,

But the angels loved her, too,

So she ’s sleeping in the valley,

’Neath the sky so bright and blue.

And no slab of pallid marble

Rears its white and ghastly head,

Telling wanderers in the valley

Of the virtues of the dead;

But a lily is her tombstone,

And a dew-drop, pure and bright,

Is the epitaph an angel wrote

In the stillness of the night.

And I ’m mournful, very mournful,

For my soul doth ever crave

For the fading of the shadows

From that little woodland grave;

For the memory of the loved one

From my soul will never part,

And those shadows in the valley

Dim the sunshine of my heart.