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But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the

waves

That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves;

If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear,

I care not who sees it,

no blush for it here!

Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West!
I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast;
Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold,

Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled !

DECEMBER, 1854.

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By some contriving junto planned,

And signed per order of Committee;

It touches every tenderest spot,

My patriotic predilections,

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My well known-something-don't ask what,
My poor old songs, my kind affections.

They make a feast on Thursday next,

And hope to make the feasters merry;
They own they're something more perplexed
For poets than for port and sherry;
They want the men of― (word torn out);

Our friends will come with anxious faces

(To see our blankets off, no doubt,

And trot us out and show our paces).

They hint that papers by the score

Are rather musty kind of rations;

They don't exactly mean a bore,

But only trying to the patience;

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Should bring the dews of Hippocrene
To sprinkle on the faces solemn.

The same old story; that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh

To read these letters from Committees ! They 're all so loving and so fair,

All for your sake such kind compunction,'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such an unction!

Why, who am I, to lift me here

And beg such learned folk to listen,

To ask a smile, or coax a tear

Beneath these stoic lids to glisten?

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As well might some arterial thread
Ask the whole frame to feel it gushing,
While throbbing fierce from heel to head
The vast aortic tide was rushing.

As well some hair-like nerve might strain
To set its special streamlet going,
While through the myriad-channelled brain
The burning flood of thought was flowing;
Or trembling fibre strive to keep

The springing haunches gathered shorter,
While the scourged racer, leap on leap,

Was stretching through the last hot quarter!

Ah me! you take the bud that came

Self-sown in your poor garden's borders,

And hand it to the stately dame

That florists breed for, all she orders;

She thanks you · it was kindly meant –

(A pale affair, not worth the keeping,) —

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To join the tea-leaves used for sweeping.

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Fresh gathered for the hour of meeting, Pale though its outer leaves may be,

Rose-red in all its inner petals,

Where the warm life we cannot see

The life of love that

it
gave - settles ?

We meet from regions far away,

Like rills from distant mountains streaming;

The sun is on Francisco's bay

O'er Chesapeake the lighthouse gleaming;

While summer girds the still bayou

In chains of bloom, her bridal token,
Monadnock sees the sky grow blue,
His crystal bracelet yet unbroken.

Yet Nature bears the self-same heart

Beneath her russet-mantled bosom,

As where with burning lips apart

She breathes, and white magnolias blossom; The self-same founts her chalice fill

With showery sunlight running over,

On fiery plain and frozen hill,

On myrtle-beds and fields of clover.

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