The Two Homes

“Oh, if the soul immortal be,Is not its love immortal too?”

See’st thou my home? ’Tis where yon woods are waving,In their dark richness, to the summer air,Where yon blue stream, a thousand flower-banks laving,Leads down the hills a vein of light,--’tis there!

Midst those green wilds how many a fount lies gleaming,Fringed with the violet, colour’d with the skies!My boyhood’s haunt, through days of summer dreaming,Under young leaves that shook with melodies.

My home! The spirit of its love is breathingIn every wind that blows across my track;From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing,Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back.

There am I loved--there pray’d for--there my motherSits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye;There my young sisters watch to greet their brother--Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly.

There, in sweet strains of kindred music blending,All the home-voices meet at day’s decline;One are those tones, as from one heart ascending,There laughs my home--sad stranger! where is thine?

Ask’st thou of mine? In solemn peace ’tis lying,Far o’er the deserts and the tombs away;’Tis where I, too, am loved with love undying,And fond hearts wait my step--But where are they?

Ask where the earth’s departed have their dwelling;Ask of the clouds, the stars, the trackless air!I know it not, yet trust the whisper, tellingMy lonely heart that love unchanged is there.

And what is home, and where, but with the lovingHappy thou art, that so canst gaze on thine!My spirit feels but, in its weary roving,That with the dead, where’er they be, is mine,

Go to thy home, rejoicing son and brother!Bear in fresh gladness to the household scene!For me, too, watch the sister and the mother,I well believe--but dark seas roll between.