See welcome's blaze still kindling where they roam, And every door disclose an hospitable Home. Is this a dream, unauthorized and vain, The light and worthless coinage of the brain? (n) As well to chace the ills that earth deform, Control the whirlwind, and chastise the storm, May man pretend, as hope, the power to find Of opening ceaseless sunshine on the mind, Of binding base desires in Reason's chain, Or calming the rough waves of Passion's main ? Ah, yet, even so, yet better hopes arise, That scorn the earth, and ask their kindred skies; Hopes, that upon a firmer basis rest, Than the weak counsels of the human breast. When Man shall quit his frail abode of clay, Earth shrink with heat, and Sun and Moon decay ; When Ruin, grasping stern the starry frame, Shall plunge them in th' abyss from which they came; The SIRE of BEING, with paternal care, Shall, for his Chosen, fit retreats prepare.→→ From Earth; from those bright Worlds, whose myriads.roll, In fair disorder o'er the nightly pole; From Stars remoter, whose unwearied light Has striven in vain to dawn on mortal sight; From Planets, which their tremulous orbits trace On the dim boundary of formless space ;— The Heirs of bliss, from every stain refin'd, Their sorrows and their frailties left behind, Shall at His voice, that calls to glory, come; Enter the gates of day, and find in HEAVEN their HOME. THE TOMB OF MY FATHERS. SUBDUED by misfortunes, and bowed down with pain, I sought on the bosom of peace to recline : I hied to the Home of my Fathers again, But the Home of my Fathers no longer was mine. The look that spoke gladness and welcome, was gone; The blaze that shone bright in the hall was no more; A stranger was there, with a bosom of stone, And cold was his eye as I entered his door. 'Twas his, deaf to pity, to tenderness dead, The falling to crush, and the humble to spurn; But I staid not his scorn, from his mansion I fled, And my beating heart vowed never more to return. What Home shall receive me! One Home yet I know, O'er its gloomy recess, see the pine-branches wave, 'Tis the Tomb of my Fathers. The world is my foe, And all my inheritance now is a grave. 'Tis the Tomb of my Fathers! The grey moistened walls, Declining to earth, speak aloud of decay : The gate, off its hinge, and half-opening, calls, "Approach, most unhappy, thy dwelling of clay." |