Home Songs
The little loves and sorrows are my song:The leafy lanes and birthsteads of my sires,Where memory broods by winter’s evening firesO’er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong;The little cares and carols that belongTo home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres,And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desiresWake with the dawn, unfevered, fair, and strong.
If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep,And tell the meaning in a mother’s eyes;Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weepWho, o’er their dead, question unanswering skies,More worth than legions in the dust of strife,Time, looking back at last, should count my life.