- Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
- Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
- Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
- With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
- With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore,
- Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
- Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
- Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
- Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
- And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
- Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
- But ah! without the thoughts which then were mine.
- How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
- Invite the bosom to recall the past,
- And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,
- Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!
- When fate shall chill, at length, this fevered breast,
- And calm its cares and passions into rest,
- Oft have I thought, twould soothe my dying hour,
- If aught may soothe when life resigns her power,
- To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell,
- Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell.
- With this fond dream, methinks, twere sweet to die
- And here it lingered, here my heart might lie;
- Here might I sleep, where all my hopes arose,
- Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;
- For ever stretched beneath this mantling shade,
- Pressed by the turf where once my childhood played;
- Wrapped by the soil that veils the spot I loved,
- Mixed with the earth oer which my footsteps moved;
- Blest by the tongues that charmed my youthful ear,
- Mourned by the few my soul acknowledged here;
- Deplored by those in early days allied,
- And unremembered by the world beside.
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