| |
Translated by William Young
O SCENES where Hope my playmate was of yore! | |
| At more than fifty you again I hail: | |
| Tokens of childhood can our youth restore, | |
| As life feels freshened by spring’s balmy gale. | |
| |
| Hail to you, hail! friends of my youthful age; | 5 |
| Hail, kindred, whom my grateful love hath blest: | |
| Thanks to your kindness, in the tempest’s rage, | |
| Poor little bird, ’t was here I found a nest. | |
| |
| The narrow prison would I see again, | |
| Where, whilst his niece in budding beauty grew, | 10 |
| The old schoolmaster o’er us used to reign, | |
| And proudly teach us more than e’er he knew. | |
| |
| Here, more than once, apprentice was I made; | |
| Ever, alas! to idle ways I turned; | |
| But when they taught me the great Franklin’s trade, | 15 |
| I deemed that I a sage’s name had earned. | |
| |
| ’T was at that age when Friendship purely grows,— | |
| Soil that a morning full of hope makes green: | |
| Thence springs a tree that oft till evening’s close | |
| Yields, as we march, a staff on which to lean. | 20 |
| |
| O scenes where Hope my playmate was of yore! | |
| At more than fifty you again I hail: | |
| Tokens of childhood can our youth restore, | |
| As life feels freshened by spring’s balmy gale. | |
| |
| ’T was in these walls that on disastrous days | 25 |
| To me the roar of hostile cannon came. | |
| Here hath my voice, attuned to festal lays, | |
| Been heard full oft to lisp my country’s name. | |
| |
| Here of my sabots was the weight forgot | |
| By dreaming soul, that soared on dove-like wings; | 30 |
| To feel Heaven’s thunderbolt was here my lot, | |
| That made me heed but little that of kings! | |
| |
| Beneath this humble roof my Reason woke, | |
| ’Gainst Fate to arm herself, returning here | |
| To laugh at Glory, wreath of transient smoke, | 35 |
| That to our eyes, like smoke, doth bring the tear. | |
| |
| Kindred and friends, who my life’s dawn did greet, | |
| Objects of love, that time but knitteth stronger, | |
| Yes, yes, my cradle still to me seems sweet, | |
| Though she who rocked it rocks it now no longer. | 40 |
| |
| O scenes where Hope my playmate was of yore! | |
| At more than fifty you again I hail: | |
| Tokens of childhood can our youth restore, | |
| As life feels freshened by spring’s balmy gale. | |
| |
