They that my trust must grow to live not here;
They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,

In mine own country.

SHAKSPEARE.

HOME! home!-I would go home!-methinks I hear
The long-hushed voices singing far away;

The eyes that made earth's very deserts dear
Shed o'er my night a portion of their day;

The lost are found, -the vanished are returned,—
And they were angels whom I wildly mourned!

How has my soul sat down amid its glooms,
A wounded captive, counting o'er its scars,-
And lingered, weeping, 'mid the shade of tombs,
For those whose dwelling was the light of stars!—
How have I called to earth-and missed replies

That should have reached me from the far, bright skies!

Till, heavy with its grief, my spirit slept,
And had a dream, like his of Bethel, given,—
A ladder, with its path by angels kept,
And pointing upward to "the gate of heaven";
On whose bright summit visions were revealed,
That hushed its throbbings and its achings healed.

What portion have I, on this low, dim earth,
Where grief is nourished by the hand of joy,—
Where love is as a fount of tears,-and mirth
Grows pale to find her echo is a sigh,—

Where time wrecks something with its smoothest waves,

And every year sets up memorial-graves !

Where they who smile must weep because they smiled,—
Where partings make it mournful that we meet,

And memory weaves her shrouds for some lost child
Of hope, laid daily at her silent feet !-
My country lies beneath a deathless air,
And all that leaves me here awaits me there.

I would go home !-ye bright and starry bands
That shine on heaven's pathway of the skies,-
Like the winged Cherubim whose flaming brands
Kept watch along the walls of Paradise,-
Oh! for a pinion swifter than your flight
To bear me to the land beyond your light!

Home would I go,—my hopes have gone before-
There where my treasure is my heart would be!
The voices that the earth shall hear no more
Are calling, with their spirit-tones, for me:
"Immortal longings" stir within my breast;
Oh! let me "flee away, and be at rest"!