University of Virginia Library

Full many a tongue,
Liquid as may be, hath its praises sung;
From his around whose lips the fond bees clung,[1]
Unto the wood-thrush wild—of `Home, sweet Home.'
'T is an old theme; yet if it can impart
Some new, fresh feelings, ever to the heart,
It may be thought of, when that heart is rife;
Words are but feelings, and so home is life.
Why is it that whate'er we hear or see,
'Minds us of house, with a strange witchery?
Because the heart is to the harp most like—
The simple Jewish harp—which, though you strike
A thousand notes, hath still its undertone,
The key-note of them all; and long and lone
That tone is heard, after they all are dead.
The sound of rain upon the humble roof—
('T is an old thought, I know, that needs no proof,
But I do use it, since its force I feel,)—
The sound of music, following on the heel
Of priests, as worthless as the music is—
The fairy foot that glances past the door,
The eye, that nothing seems but love to pour

From all its deep, black, keen intensity;—
One brings to memory
The rains, that oft have lulled me unto rest,
In the old mansion, after, from the west,
Them rising slowly up, I had beholden,
And covering with their frown the bright and golden,
But dying smile of the chill-hearted sun—
Of the small stream, that near the old house run,
As if a smile of friendship there had fallen,
And coursed along—the fields with gray rocks wallen,
And every old and much familiar thing,
That seemed to watch and love me, slumbering;
The other seems the breathing of the flute
Of my old friend, so rich, so round and clear—
(Yet sweet as 't was, when all its tones were mute,
His voice was still more pleasant to my ear);
The last—but that's a dream—
Yet it may seem,
That one may keep alive a sunny dream
Within the few green places of his heart,
Where Want and Wo long since have wiled themselves,
Like the ice-worm of Taurus.
God of heaven!
Never from me let that fond dream be riven:
The dream of hope, love, joy and home, again,
As to the dry grass doth a summer rain,
Doth unto me a new existence prove.
It is like some lone, silver, sad-eyed dove,
Sitting amid the elements' commotion,
And fanning with her wings the angry ocean,
Until she make herself a quiet nook,
Quiet as heaven. It is like some sad book,
Of beautiful words, in which the angry reads
Until, within his heart, new thoughts it feeds,
Till, as the book is, he is quiet too.
It is like anything most sweet and strange,
Which can our angry, tortured passions change
Unto more mildness, in its soothing way.
It is the theme which keeps me from despair;
That, be my grief or sorrows what they may,
Their sepulchre, their burial clothes are there.