I heard an old, familiar air
Strummed idly by a careless hand,
Yet in the melody were rare,
Sweet echoings from childhood land.
The well-remembered mother touch,
The wise denials and consents,
The trivial sorrows that were much,
Small pleasures that were large events;
The fancies, dreams, strange wonderings,
The daily problems unexplained,
Momentous as the cares of kings
That on unhappy thrones have reigned,
Came back with each unstudied tone;
And came that song remembered best,
Which, with a sweetness all its own,
Once lulled the play-worn child to rest.
And there, secure as Tarik's height,
He slumbered, shielded from alarms,
Safe from the mystery of night,
Close folded in the mother's arms.
Then Israel's mighty songs of old,
And all the modern masters' art,
Were less than simple lays that told
The secret of the mother's heart.
The sweetest melody that flows
From lips that win the world's applause
Charms not like that which childhood knows,
Unfettered by the curb of laws.
For though we rise to nobler themes,
To grander harmonies attain,
Their lives not in the academes
The magic of the simpler strain.
And we may spurn the cruder song,
Or name it anything we will,
Denounce the artifice as wrong,
Yet to the child 'tis music still.
Thus, list'ning to an idle air,
Struck lightly by a careless hand,
I heard, amid the cadence there,
The sweetest song of childhood land.