bring
With pitying smiles that none could blame;
Alas! there's not a single string
Of all that filled the tarnished frame!
But see! like children overjoyed,
His fingers rambling through the void!

"I clasp thee! Ay . . . mine ancient lyre . . .
Nay, guide my wandering fingers. . . There
They love to dally with the wire
As Isaac played with Esau's hair.
Hush! ye shall hear the famous tune
That Marian called the Breath of June!"

And so they softly gather round
Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems
His fingers move: but not a sound!
A silence like the song of dreams. . . .
"There! ye have heard the air," he cries,
"That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!"

Ah, smile not at his fond conceit,
Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;
To him the unreal sounds are sweet,--
No discord mars the silent strain
Scored on life's latest, starlit page--
The voiceless melody of age.

Sweet are the lips, of all that sing,
When Nature's music breathes unsought,
But never yet could voice or string
So truly shape our tenderest thought
As when by life's decaying fire
Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre!

OUR HOME--OUR COUNTRY

FOR THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE
SETTLEMENT OF CAMBRIDGE, MASS., DECEMBER 28, 1880

YOUR home was mine,--kind Nature's gift;
My love no years can chill;
In vain their flakes the storm-winds sift,
The snow-drop hides beneath the drift,
A living blossom still.

Mute are a hundred long-famed lyres,
Hushed all their golden strings;
One lay the coldest bosom fires,
One song, one only, never tires
While sweet-voiced memory sings.

No spot so lone but echo knows
That dear familiar strain;
In tropic isles, on arctic snows,
Through burning lips its music flows
And rings its fond refrain.

From Pisa's tower my straining sight
Roamed wandering leagues away,
When lo! a frigate's banner bright,
The starry blue, the red, the white,
In far Livorno's bay.

Hot leaps the life-blood from my heart,
Forth springs the sudden tear;
The ship that rocks by yonder mart
Is of my land, my life, a part,--
Home, home, sweet home, is here!

Fades from my view the sunlit scene,--
My vision spans the waves;
I see the elm-encircled green,
The tower,--the steeple,--and, between,
The field of ancient graves.

There runs the path my feet would tread
When first they learned to stray;
There stands the gambrel roof that spread
Its quaint old angles o'er my head
When first I saw the day.

The soun