 | Poems, original and translated |  |
154
THE OLD HOMES.
The heart's old homes! how many we have known!But three, most dear of all, I call my own.
Three homes are mine: to each my spirit clings;
To each my song a grateful tribute brings.
The first, my place of birth: the dear old town
Where to my infant eyes Heaven first came down;
Where my first foretaste of its perfect bliss
Came in a mother's smile, a mother's kiss;
Where Nature's wondrous face my musings blessed;
Where Heaven upon the treetops seemed to rest.
Then that fair island, scarce less dear to me,
Embosomed in New England's Zuyder Zee, —
The home of my adoption; where I found
Amidst the sea of life an anchoring ground;
Where the transplanted tree put forth young shoots,
And drank new life through all its clinging roots:
But yet a third sweet home I still would name,
Whose charms with equal right that title claim
Where first the Muses won my youthful love,
And drew my steps to their enchanted grove;
Where first I felt the awful, rapturous thrill
That stirs the heart beneath their sacred hill;
Drank inspiration from Castalia's fount,
And breathed the air that floats o'er Delphi's mount;
Where first I heard old Homer's trumpet clang,
And Virgil's Mantuan pipe melodious sang.
| Poems, original and translated | |