Home Songs

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <h2> Home Songs </h2> <p> The little loves and sorrows are my song:<br/> The leafy lanes and birthsteads of my sires,<br/> Where memory broods by winter's evening fires<br/> O'er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong;<br/> The little cares and carols that belong<br/> To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres,<br/> And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desires<br/> Wake with the dawn, unfevered, fair, and strong.<br/> <br/> If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep,<br/> And tell the meaning in a mother's eyes;<br/> Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep<br/> Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies,<br/> More worth than legions in the dust of strife,<br/> Time, looking back at last, should count my life.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />