| |
| DEAR singer of our fathers’ day, | |
| Who lingerest in the sunset glow, | |
| Our grateful hearts all bid thee stay; | |
| Bend hitherward and do not go. | |
| Gracious thine age, thy youth was strong, | 5 |
| For Freedom touched thy tongue with fire: | |
| To sing the right and fight the wrong | |
| Thine equal hand held bow or lyre. | |
| O linger, linger long, | |
| Singer of song. | 10 |
| |
| We beg thee stay; thy comrade star | |
| Which later rose is earlier set; | |
| What music and what battle-scar | |
| When side by side the fray ye met! | |
| Thy trumpet and his drum and fife | 15 |
| Gave saucy challenge to the foe | |
| In Liberty’s heroic strife; | |
| We mourn for him, thou must not go! | |
| Yet linger, linger long, | |
| Singer of song. | 20 |
| |
| We cannot yield thee; only thou | |
| Art left to us, and one beside | |
| Whose silvered wisdom still can show | |
| How smiles and tears together bide. | |
| And we would bring our boys to thee, | 25 |
| And bid them hold in memory crowned | |
| That they our saintliest bard did see, | |
| The Galahad of our table round. | |
| Then linger, linger long, | |
| Singer of song. | 30 |
| |
| The night is dark; three radiant beams | |
| Are gone that crossed the zenith sky; | |
| For one the water-fowl, meseems, | |
| For two the Elmwood herons cry. | |
| Ye twain that early rose and still | 35 |
| Skirt low the level west along, | |
| Sink when ye must, to rise and fill | |
| The morrow’s east with light and song | |
| But linger, linger long, | |
| Singer of song. | 40 |
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