Unbound is that sweet wreath of home—alas! the lonely hearth!
The voices that have mingled here now speak another tongue,
Or breathe, perchance, to alien ears the songs their mother sung.
Sad, strangely sad, in stranger lands, must sound each household tone:
The hearth, the hearth is desolate! the bright fire quench’d and gone!
But are they speaking, singing yet, as in their days of glee?
Those voices, are they lovely still, still sweet on earth or sea?
Oh! some are hush’d, and some are changed, and never shall one strain
Blend their fraternal cadences triumphantly again.
And of the hearts that here were link’d by long-remember’d years,