My native isle! my native isle!
In sunnier climes I've strayed,
But better love thy pebbled beach
And lonely forest glade,
Where low winds stir with fragrant breath
The purple violet's head,
And the star-grass in the early spring
Peeps from the sear leaf's bed.
I would no more of tears and strife
Might on thee ever meet,
But when against the tide of years
This heart has ceased to beat,
Where the green weeping willows bend
I fain would go to rest,
Where waters lave, and winds may sweep
Above my peaceful breast.
SONNET.
SUGGESTED BY THE GREAT MOVEMENTS IN EUROPE.
BY ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
To marshal you, oh army of the Poor!
The spirits of the Past have back returned—
They who once toiled for you, though crushed and spurned;
Toiled, that while Truth and Freedom evermore
Might guard the olive of the lowliest door:
He, the Great human Type, for whom men yearned,
And longed in prophecy, for you, who mourned:
And they, the martyrs, red at every pore:
The blood-sown Truth of all these mighty dead
Ye have ingarnered, and the fruit appears
Nursed unto giant growth to the full days—
Now, Lebanon is shaken—Isles outspread
Amid the seas are stirred—they who sowed in tears
In gladness now the harvest pæan raise.