Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 2 (1869).djvu/18

And many a day has passed away since, I left them o’er the sea,
And I have lived a life since then of boyhood’s thoughtless glee;
Yet of the blessed times gone by not seldom would I dream,
And childhood’s joy, like faint far stars, in memory’s heaven would gleam,
And o’er the sea to those I loved my thoughts would often roam,
But never knew I until now the blessings of a home!

I used to think when I was there that my own true home was here,
But home is not in land or sky, but in those whom each holds dear.
The evening’s cooling breeze is fanning my temples now,
But then my frame was languid, and heated was my brow,
And I longed for England’s cool, and for England’s breezes then,
But now I would give full many a breeze to be back in the heat again.

But when cold strange looks without, and proud high thoughts within,
Are weaving round my heart the woof of selfishness and sin;
When self begins to roll a far, a worse and wider sea
Of careless and unloving thoughts between those friends and me,
I will think upon these moments, and call to mind the day
When I watched them from the window, thy children at their play.
1836