PATRIOTIC AND NATIONAL HYMNS, SONGS, AND
I LOVE my country's pine-clad hills,
Her thousand bright and gushing rills,
Her sunshine and her storms;
Her rough and rugged rocks that rear
Their hoary heads high in the air
In wild fantastic forms.
I love her rivers, deep and wide,
Those mighty streams that seaward glide
To seek the ocean's breast;
Her smiling fields, her pleasant vales,
Her shady dells, her flowery dales,
The haunts of peaceful rest.
I love her forests, dark and lone,
For there the wild bird's merry tone
Is heard from morn till night,
And there are lovelier flowers, I ween,
Than e'er in Eastern lands were seen,
In varied colors bright.
Her forests and her valleys fair,
Her flowers that scent the morning air,
Have all their charms for me;
But more I love my country's name,
Those words that echo deathless fame,-
"The land of liberty."
Он, give me back my native hills,
My daisied meads, and trouted rills,
And groves of pine!
Oh, give me, too, the mountain air,-
My youthful days without a care,
When rose for me a mother's prayer,
In tones divine!
Long years have passed, and I behold
My father's elms and mansion old,-
The brook's bright wave;
But, ah! the scenes which fancy drew
Deceived my heart,-the friends I knew,
Are sleeping now, beneath the yew,-
Low in the grave!
The sunny sports I loved so well,
When but a child, seem like a spell
Flung round the bier!
The ancient wood, the cliff, the glade,
Whose charms, methought, could never fade,
Again I view,—yet shed, unstayed,
Here let me kneel, and linger long,
And pour, unheard, my native song,
And seek relief!
Like Ocean's wave that restless heaves,
My days roll on, yet memory weaves
Her twilight o'er the past, and leaves
A balm for grief!
Oh that I could again recall
My early joys, companions, all,
That cheered my youth!
But, ah! 'tis vain,-how changed am I!
My heart hath learned the bitter sigh!
The pure shall meet beyond the sky,-
How sweet the truth!
BREATHES there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land"?
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well.
For him no minstrel raptures swell.
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down,
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
THERE lies a village in a peaceful vale,
With sloping hills and waving woods around, Fenced from the blasts. There, never ruder gale Bows the tall grass that covers all the ground; And planted shrubs are there, and cherished flowers, And a bright verdure born of gentle showers.
'Twas there my young existence was begun, My earliest sports were on its flowery green, And often when my school-boy task was done,
I climbed its hills to view the pleasant scene, And stood and gazed till the sun's setting ray Shone on the height,-the sweetest of the day.
There, when that hour of mellow light was come,
And mountain shadows cooled the ripened grain,
I watched the weary yeoman plodding home,
In the lone path that winds across the plain,
To rest his limbs, and watch his child at play,
And tell him o'er the labors of the day.
And when the woods put on their autumn glow,
And the bright sun came in among the trees,
And leaves were gathering in the glen below,
Swept softly from the mountains by the breeze,
I wandered till the starlight on the stream
At length awoke me from my fairy dream.
Ah! happy days, too happy to return,
Fled on the wings of youth's departed years,
A bitter lesson has been mine to learn,
The truth of life, its labors, pains, and fears;
Yet does the memory of my boyhood stay,
A twilight of the brightness passed away.
My thoughts steal back to that sweet village still;
Its flowers and peaceful shades before me rise;
The play-place and the prospect from the hill,
Its summer verdure, and autumnal dyes;
The present brings its storms; but, while they last,
I shelter me in the delightful past.
THERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons imparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth.
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