The Exile's Dirge

There went a dirge through the forest’s gloom.
--An exile was borne to a lonely tomb.

“Brother!” (so the chant was sung
In the slumberer’s native tongue,)
“Friend and brother! not for thee
Shall the sound of weeping be:
Long the exile’s woe hath lain
On thy life a withering chain;
Music from thine own blue streams
Wander’d through thy fever-dreams;
Voices from thy country’s vines
Met thee midst the alien pines;
And thy time heart died away,
And thy spirit would not stay.”

So swell’d the chant; and the deep wind’s moan,
Seem’d through the cedars to murmur--“Gone!”

“Brother! by the rolling Rhine
Stands the home that once was thine;
Brother! now thy dwelling lies
Where the Indian arrow flies!
He that bless’d thine infant head
Fills a distant greensward bed;
She that heard thy lisping prayer
Slumbers low beside him there;
They that earliest with thee play’d
Rest beneath their own oak-shade,
Far, far hence!--yet sea nor shore
Haply, brother! part ye more;
God hath call’d thee to that band
In the immortal Fatherland!”

“The Fatherland!”--with that sweet word
A burst of tears midst the strain was heard.

“Brother! were we there with thee
Rich would many a meeting be!
Many a broken garland bound,
Many a mourn’d and lost one found!
But our task is still to bear,
Still to breathe in changeful air;
Loved and bright things to resign,
As even now this dust of thine;
Yet to hope!--to hope in heaven,
Though flowers fall, and ties be riven--
Yet to pray! and wait the hand
Beckoning to the Fatherland!”

And the requiem died in the forest’s gloom;
They had reach’d the exile’s lonely tomb.