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MY NATIVE PLACE.
Your greeting smiles were fond and fair,
I stretch my arms—ye are not there;
I call—ye answer not the strain,
Haunt, bower and hearth, I search in vain,
Where are ye?—distant echoes drear,
And Death's dark caverns answer—here.
Thus like the pageant of a dream,
This shadowy span of life doth seem,
Thus, in the twinkling of an eye
The mourner with the mourned shall lie.
Land of my birth! a few times more
Winter may scathe thy temples hoar,
Or Summer, with unsandled foot,
Her sickle to thy harvest put;
And then, should kind remembrance save
One wild-flower garland for my grave,
Or from Oblivion's voiceless shore
One solitary trace restore,
Then let the cherished record be,
My hope in heaven, my love to thee.
