Voyager across the seas, In my arms thy form I press; Come, my Baby, me to please, Blue-eyed nurseling, motherless!
All is strange and beautiful, Every sense finds glad surprise, Life is lovely, wonderful, Faces fair, and beaming eyes.
Safe, ye angels, keep this child, Life-long guard her innocence, Winsome ways, and temper mild; Heaven, our home, be her defence!
“O, how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?” Shakespeare.
XXI.
Dear Heart! if aught to human love I’ve owed For noble furtherance of the good and fair; Climbed I, by bold emprise, the dizzying stair To excellence, and was by thee approved, In memory cherished and the more beloved; If fortune smiled, and late-won liberty,— ’T was thy kind favor all, thy generous legacy. Nor didst thou spare thy large munificence Me here to pleasure amply and maintain, But conjured from suspicion and mischance, Exile, misapprehension, cold disdain, For my loved cloud-rapt dream, supremacy; To bright reality transformed romance, Crowning with smiles the hard-earned victory.
“The hills were reared, the valleys scooped in vain, If Learning’s altars vanish from the plain.” Channing.
XXII.
Calm vale of comfort, peace, and industry, Well doth thy name thy homebred traits express!— Considerate people, neighborly and free, Proud of their monuments, their ancestry, Their circling river’s quiet loveliness, Their noble townsmen’s fame and history. Nor less I glory in each goodly trait, Child of another creed, a stricter State; I chose thee for my haunt in troublous time, My home in days of late prosperity, And laud thee now in this familiar rhyme; Here on thy bosom the last summons wait To scenes, if lovelier, still reflecting thee, Resplendent both in hope and memory.