Yet Nature bears the selfsame heart
Beneath her russet-mantled bosom
As where, with burning lips apart,
She breathes and white magnolias blossom;
The selfsame founts her chalice fill
With showery sunlight running over,
On fiery plain and frozen hill,
On myrtle-beds and fields of clover.
I give you Home! its crossing lines
United in one golden suture,
And showing every day that shines
The present growing to the future,—
A flag that bears a hundred stars
In one bright ring, with love for centre,
Fenced round with white and crimson bars
No prowling treason dares to enter!
O brothers, home may be a word
To make affection's living treasure,
The wave an angel might have stirred,
A stagnant pool of selfish pleasure;
HOME! It is where the day-star springs
And where the evening sun reposes,
Where'er the eagle spreads his wings,
From northern pines to southern roses!
A SENTIMENT
A TRIPLE health to Friendship, Science, Art,
From heads and hands that own a common heart!
Each in its turn the others' willing slave,
Each in its season strong to heal and save.
Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need,
Wipes the pale face, and lets the victim bleed.
Science must stop to reason and explain;
ART claps his finger on the streaming vein.
But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last;
Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past.
When both their equal impotence deplore,
When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more,
The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm,
And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm
May 1, 1855.