 | The poems, sacred, passionate, and humorous, of Nathaniel Parker Willis |  |
291
BIRTHDAY IN A FOREIGN ISLE.
'Tis the day my mother bore her son!
She has thought since morn of her absent one.
At break of day she remember'd me
With trembling lip and bended knee;
And, at the hour of morning prayer,
She has fix'd her eye on the empty chair;
And, as my father bow'd to pray,
For one much loved and far away,
My mother's heart was stirr'd anew,
And tears have gush'd her fingers through;
And with moving lips and low-bent head,
Her soul to heaven has melting fled.
She has thought since morn of her absent one.
At break of day she remember'd me
With trembling lip and bended knee;
And, at the hour of morning prayer,
She has fix'd her eye on the empty chair;
And, as my father bow'd to pray,
For one much loved and far away,
My mother's heart was stirr'd anew,
And tears have gush'd her fingers through;
And with moving lips and low-bent head,
Her soul to heaven has melting fled.
Mother! dear mother! I've wander'd long,
And must wander still, in these lands of song.
My cheek is burnt with eastern suns;
My boyish blood more tamely runs:
My speech is cold, my bosom seal'd;
My once free nature check'd and steel'd;
I have found the world so unlike thee;
I have been so forced a rock to be;
It has froze my heart!—of my mother only,
When the hours are sad, in places lonely—
Only of thee—does a thought go by
That leaves a tear in my weary eye:
I see thy smile in the clouded air;
I feel thy hand in my wind-stirr'd hair;
I hear thy voice, with its pleading tone,
When else I had felt in the world alone—
So alone, that there seem'd to be
Only my mother 'twixt heaven and me!
And must wander still, in these lands of song.
My cheek is burnt with eastern suns;
My boyish blood more tamely runs:
My speech is cold, my bosom seal'd;
My once free nature check'd and steel'd;
I have found the world so unlike thee;
I have been so forced a rock to be;
It has froze my heart!—of my mother only,
When the hours are sad, in places lonely—
Only of thee—does a thought go by
That leaves a tear in my weary eye:
I see thy smile in the clouded air;
I feel thy hand in my wind-stirr'd hair;
292
When else I had felt in the world alone—
So alone, that there seem'd to be
Only my mother 'twixt heaven and me!
Mother! dear mother! the feeling nurst
As I hung at thy bosom, clung round thee first,
'Twas the earliest link in love's warm chain;
'Tis the only one that will long remain;
And as, year by year, and day by day,
Some friend still trusted drops away,
Mother! dear mother! oh, dost thou see
How the shorten'd chain brings me nearer thee!
As I hung at thy bosom, clung round thee first,
'Twas the earliest link in love's warm chain;
'Tis the only one that will long remain;
And as, year by year, and day by day,
Some friend still trusted drops away,
Mother! dear mother! oh, dost thou see
How the shorten'd chain brings me nearer thee!
Malta, Jan. 20, 1834.
| The poems, sacred, passionate, and humorous, of Nathaniel Parker Willis | |