At Home

Beautiful home, upon thy wide-spread plain
Expands a waiving field of golden grain,
Whereon the mirage plays, O, country dear,
Knowest thou still thy son, now pining here?

'Tis long ago since welcome rest I found
Beneath the poplar trees I yet see round,
While, through the autumn sky high overhead.
Migrating cranes in V-shape southward sped.

When on the threshold of our house, with tears,,
Heartsore, I bade good-by to all my dears,
And when dear mother's last and parting sigh
On gentle zephyr's wings away did fly;

Ah, many a line of years, since then begun,
Their course completed, to their death have run,
While on revolving, wheels of fate I passed
Through various scenes in w'hich my lot was cast.

The great world is the school of life, I trow,
Through which I plodded with perspiring brow,
Because the road I trod was hard and rough,
And, from the start, I traversed wastes enough.

I know — and none knows better than I well think-
To whom experience held her hemlock drink,
That rather I would drain the cup of death
Than the black chalice w'hich she proffereth.
But now despair and grief and bitter pain
Which swelled my heart nigh rending it in twain,
Are gone; their memory e'en is washed away
By holy tears of joy I shed to-day.

For here, where once I lay on mother's breast,
Drank in her honey-ed love — to me the best —
The sun shines smilingly from heaven's dome
Again on thy true son, O fair, loved home!