E'en to the sighs and dancing, shall be joined
The music of the happy memories
Awakened by the linnet and the thrush,
The wren, the robin and th' entrancing lark,
As once again each throbbing voice of theirs
Thrills in the thicket or the greenwood copse,
Or hovers over England's free, fair homes.
And now, the morning flashes broad and clear;
From beetling cliff to cliff the sea-mew calls,
Where the sea-diver, fearless, cleaves the foam;
And, soul to soul, and voice to voice, the choirs
Of nature whistle to the murmuring caves
Where the waves break upon the sounding shore.
III.
And so, the voices blend, whereto we build
The life and music of this crowning day;
And, as the music of the memories
Lives in the voluntary bond of love,
In retrospection of some duty done,
Or of the winning of some soul's reward,
So, at each dawn of day, or sunset hour,
Or when the song-bird sings or pine tree sighs,
Or the wild curlew challenges the storm,
Love lives anew, life leaps to high resolve,
And courage knows less peril in the deep.
Yet music is not all in memories;
The voices of each day new songs awake,
To higher hopes inspire, and higher aims;
The pattering, pelting rain upon the roof—
One moment free from fondest memory—
Laughs with the rippling rattle of the hail;
The softly falling snowflake tempers the blast;
Loud though his voice, the lion's imperious roar
Mars not the gentle voice of the nightingale;
The shining pathway of our cannon-voiced
Leviathan widens toward the rising sun
And, resting where our "ship of pearl" unfurls,
"On the sweet summer wind, its purpled wings,"
Inhales the peaceful spirit of repose;
The zephyr, into flowing billows, bends
The ripening field of molten golden grain,
—2—
