Angel of Peace, thou hast wandered too long! Spread thy white wings to the sunshine of love! Come while our voices are blended in song, - Fly to our ark like the storm-beaten dove!...
It is not what we say or sing, That keeps our charm so long unbroken, Though every lightest leaf we bring May touch the heart as friendship's token; Not what we sing or what we say...
Yes, we knew we must lose him, - though friendship may claim To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown....
The land of sunshine and of song! Her name your hearts divine; To her the banquet's vows belong Whose breasts have poured its wine; Our trusty friend, our true ally Through varied change and chance...
When the Puritans came over Our hills and swamps to clear, The woods were full of catamounts, And Indians red as deer, With tomahawks and scalping-knives, That make folks' heads look queer;...
Once more Orion and the sister Seven Look on thee from the skies that hailed thy birth, - How shall we welcome thee, whose home was heaven, From thy celestial wanderings back to earth? ...
'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls"; When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story,...
The dirge is played, the throbbing death-peal rung, The sad-voiced requiem sung; On each white urn where memory dwells The wreath of rustling immortelles Our loving hands have hung,...
THE DIVINE VOICE Go seek thine earth-born sisters, - thus the Voice That all obey, - the sad and silent three; These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice, Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be;...
I like, at times, to hear the steeples' chimes With sober thoughts impressively that mingle; But sometimes, too, I rather like - don't you? - To hear the music of the sleigh bells' jingle. ...
Ere yet the warning chimes of midnight sound, Set back the flaming index of the year, Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere! ...
Once more, ye sacred towers, Your solemn dirges sound; Strew, loving hands, the April flowers, Once more to deck his mound. A nation mourns its dead, Its sorrowing voices one,...
Not with the anguish of hearts that are breaking Come we as mourners to weep for our dead; Grief in our breasts has grown weary of aching, Green is the turf where our tears we have shed. ...