FAREWELL TO CHARLESTON
Enchanted city, O farewell, farewell!
If farewell it can be
When here, 'twixt the dark pines and sunrise sea,
Our hearts remain,
While fare our bodies to the North again!
Here stay our hearts amid these mansions stately,
These oaks, forever green, that guard sedately
The living and the dead—
Thrilled through with song that hath interpreted
The beauty and the gladness of the day.
O, yes, our hearts remain; they must forever stay
'Midst happy gardens, unforgettable,
And where St. Michael's chimes
The fragrant hours exquisitely tell,
Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes.
"THE PINES"
These are the sounds that I heard at the home in "The Pines":
The frightened cry of the yellowthroat hid in the trees;
The chipmunk's rustling tread on the autumn leaves
That fringe with brown the green of the wave and the wood;
The purr of the quick canoe where it curves the wave
And the liquid push of the oar; the voice of the wind
Now far, now near, as it sighs through the swaying boughs—
Through the boughs that sway with a slow and wave-like motion
Like growths of the sea that swing in the moving waters;
The voice of the wind I heard, now near, now far;
Voice of the grieving world that murmurs and calls
And wakes in the spirit of man an answering cry.
