be converted into sweet gentle sounds, such as perchance surround his young home; a home to which his affections still cling, the more distant he may happen to be from it. It was a beautiful idea of the Italian poet, who likened the yearning for home of the Swiss exiles to the tightening of the invisible strings that bound their hearts to their native lands as they increased in distance from it.
The tired soldier too,
“When the night cloud has lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;”
on his pallet of straw, he dreams of his home and all his dear associations. He dreams of his native vale far away and in imagination he looks for the familiar objects of childhood, each associated with some dear reminiscence that makes perchance a wild flower to his heart a dearer object than the richest gem! What is cold, hunger, wounds, and pains then to him? He returns “weary and wan,” yet, oh so happy to those he loves.
“He hears his own mountain goats bleating aloft,
He knows the sweet strain which the corn-reapers sing.”
He sees his home—the cottage embowered amongst crawling honey-suckles. Every sight and sound is to his ears delightful. The wild flowers breathe delicious perfume. Then he reaches the well-known door. There is a cry of welcome!
“His little ones kiss him a thousand times o’er
And his wife sobs aloud in her fulness of heart.”