Ah! sunny home by the hillside,
Song-birds of the long ago,
I hear your glad, wild, sweet singing,
And the murmuring brooklet’s flow.
Ah! happy days in the wildwood,
Revelling in nature’s bowers;
Bluest skies, and soft wind sighing
’Mid the tall trees and flowers.
Ah! songs I sang with my mother
At evening’s golden glow,
Voices of father and brother,
Why are ye haunting me so?
Ah! years that came with temptation,
And lured me away from right,
Till hope was gone, and in frenzy
I fled from its wiles in fright.
Weep, hearts, for there on the morrow,
By the sun’s wan light ye may trace
His weary way, and find there
Frozen tears on his poor dead face.
God in His infinite mercy
Knew when all hope was slain,
And closed his eyes, and in pity
Relieved him from earthly pain.
A SPECTRE.
Away, gaunt fiend!
Take thy tyrannous presence from my cottage door.
Too long thou hast held me captive at thy will,
And I cannot bear thy blighting touch so chill,
For I am weary, and my heart is bruised and sore.
Too long thou’st mocked me with thy hideous face;
When all the world seemed dark and cold to me,
Thou’st jeered and taunted in thy fiendish glee,
That I was homeless and had scarce a resting place.
Vile spectre, avaunt!
Take thy evil visage from my humble cottage door,
And thy lacerating talons from my shrinking heart.
O! I have prayed that thou would’st pity and depart,
And leave me peace at last that I might want no more.
Why hast thou all these weary and burdened years
Shadowed every hope and left but toil and pain,
Clutched at my very life, and made all vain
The aspirations that died in sorrow and in tears?
Down, black phantom!
Filled with blighted hopes, vain dreams, and dead men’s bones,
Thou heedest not the pleadings of the souls that die,
The widow’s want and prayer, the orphan’s cry
For help, earth’s poor that struggle on ’mid sighs and moans.
Thou hast still’d the voices that rang light and gay,
And hushed the laughter that will gush no more,
And brought the gloom of night along the shining shore
Of souls once bright with bloom and sunny as the day.
Insatiate ghoul!
I’d snatch thee from thy infamous pedestal,
And hurl thee writhing down the glaring vaults of hell,
That man might walk redeemed, with head erect, and dwell
In plenteousness when capital’s divided well.
But I’ll arise and smite thy grinning, dev’lish face;
Aye, I’ll fight thee unto death’s grim, ghastly gate,
And, though I perish by thy cruel fangs and fate,
’Twere best to fight a hero’s fight for liberty and place!