Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OUR HOME - OUR COUNTRY, by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Your home was mine, - kind nature's gift Last Line: "I am a cambridge boy!" Subject(s): Cambridge, Massachusetts | ||||||||
YOUR home was mine, -- kind Nature's gift; My love no years can chill; In vain their flakes the storm-winds sift, The snowdrop hides beneath the drift, A living blossom still. Mute are a hundred long-famed lyres, Hushed all their golden strings; One lay the coldest bosom fires, One song, one only, never tires While sweet-voiced memory sings. No spot so lone but echo knows That dear familiar strain; In tropic isles, on arctic snows, Through burning lips its music flows And rings its fond refrain. From Pisa's tower my straining sight Roamed wandering leagues away, When lo! a frigate's banner bright, The starry blue, the red, the white, In far Livorno's bay. Hot leaps the life-blood from my heart, Forth springs the sudden tear; The ship that rocks by yonder mart Is of my land, my life, a part, -- Home, home, sweet home, is here! Fades from my view the sunlit scene, -- My vision spans the waves; I see the elm-encircled green, The tower, -- the steeple, -- and, between, The field of ancient graves. There runs the path my feet would tread When first they learned to stray; There stands the gambrel roof that spread Its quaint old angles o'er my head When first I saw the day. The sounds that met my boyish ear My inward sense salute, -- The woodnotes wild I loved to hear, -- The robin's challenge, sharp and clear, -- The breath of evening's flute. The faces loved from cradle days, -- Unseen, alas, how long! As fond remembrance round them plays, Touched with its softening moonlight rays, Through fancy's portal throng. And see! as if the opening skies Some angel form had spared Us wingless mortals to surprise, The little maid with light-blue eyes, White necked and golden haired! So rose the picture full in view I paint in feebler song; Such power the seamless banner knew Of red and white and starry blue For exiles banished long. Oh, boys, dear boys, who wait as men To guard its heaven-bright folds, Blest are the eyes that see again That banner, seamless now, as then, -- The fairest earth beholds! Sweet was the Tuscan air and soft In that unfading hour, And fancy leads my footsteps oft Up the round galleries, high aloft On Pisa's threatening tower. And still in Memory's holiest shrine I read with pride and joy, "For me those stars of empire shine; That empire's dearest home is mine; I am a Cambridge boy!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BOSTON YEAR by ELIZABETH ALEXANDER SONNET - REALITIES: 1 by EDWARD ESTLIN CUMMINGS IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ST. JOHN'S, CAMBRIDGE; SONNET by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE BRIDGE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THREE FRIENDS OF MINE: 5; SONNET by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE SPHINX AT MOUNT AUBURN by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY [DECEMBER 16, 1773] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES |
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