| |
| AGAIN we meet, where often we have met, | |
| Dear Rother! native Don! | |
| We meet again, to talk, with vain regret, | |
| Of deedless aims! and years remembered yet,— | |
| The past and gone! | 5 |
| |
| We meet again,—perchance to meet no more! | |
| O rivers of the heart! | |
| I hear a voice, unvoyaged billows o’er, | |
| Which bids me hasten to their pathless shore, | |
| And cries, “Depart!” | 10 |
| |
| “Depart!” it cries. “Why linger on the stage | |
| Where virtues are veiled crimes? | |
| Have I not read thee, even from youth to age? | |
| Thou blotted book, with only one bright page! | |
| Thy honest rhymes! | 15 |
| |
| “Depart, pale drone! What fruit-producing flower | |
| Hast thou reared on the plain? | |
| What useful moments count’st thou in thine hour? | |
| What victim hast thou snatched from cruel power? | |
| What tyrant slain?” | 20 |
| |
| I will obey the power whom all obey. | |
| Yes, rivers of the heart! | |
| O’er that blind deep, where morning casts no ray | |
| To cheer the oarless wanderer on his way, | |
| I will depart. | 25 |
| |
| But first, O rivers of my childhood! first | |
| My soul shall talk with you; | |
| For on your banks my infant thoughts were nursed; | |
| Here from the bud the spirit’s petals burst, | |
| When life was new. | 30 |
| |
| Before my fingers learned to play with flowers, | |
| My feet through flowers to stray; | |
| Ere my tongue lisped, amid your dewy bowers, | |
| Its first glad hymn to mercy’s sunny showers | |
| And air and day; | 35 |
| |
| When in my mother’s arms, an infant frail, | |
| Along your windings borne, | |
| My blue eye caught your glimmer in the vale, | |
| Where halcyons darted o’er your willows pale, | |
| On wings like morn. | 40 |
| |
| Ye saw my feelings round that mother grow, | |
| Like green leaves round the root! | |
| Then thought, with danger came, and flowered like woe! | |
| But deeds, the fervent deeds that blush and glow, | |
| Are virtue’s fruit. * * * * * | 45 |
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