Meet ne'er to sever?”
—to a tune in B flat minor, excessively plaintive, and likely to sadden an emotional singer or hearer to tears. The full harmony is found in the American Vocalist, and the air is reprinted in the Revivalist (1868). The fact that minor music is the natural 313 / 267 Indian tone in song makes it probable that the melody is as ancient as the hymn—though no date is given for either.
Tradition says that nearly fifty years later the same three Indians were providentially drawn to the spot where they parted, and met again, and while they were together composed and sang another ode. Truth to tell, however, it had only one note of gladness, and that was in the first stanza:
Parted many a toil-spent year,
Pledged in youth to memory dear,
Still to friendship's magnet true,
We our social joys renew;
Bound by love's unsevered chain,
Here on earth we meet again.
The remaining three stanzas dwell principally on the ravages time has made. The reunion ode of those stoical college classmates of a stoical race could have been sung in the same B flat minor.