Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 25, Pages 570-571
SONGS OF THE AFFECTIONS.
BY MRS HEMANS.
IV.
THE RETURN.
Oh! bid him reverence, in his manhood's prime
His youth's bright morning-dream.
Don Carlos.
"Art thou come with the heart of thy childhood back,
The free, the pure, the kind?"
—So murmur'd the trees in my homeward track,
As they play'd to the mountain wind:
"Hast thou been true to thine early love?
Whisper'd my native streams;
"Doth the spirit, rear'd amidst hill and grove,
Still revere its first high dreams?"
"Hast thou borne in thy bosom the holy prayer
Of the child in his parent-halls?"—
Thus breathed a voice on the thrilling air
From the old ancestral walls:
"Hast thou kept thy faith with the faithful dead,
Whose place of rest is nigh?
With the father's blessing o'er thee shed?
With the mother's trusting eye?"
Then my tears gush'd forth in sudden rain,
As I answer'd—"O ye shades!
I bring not my childhood's heart again
To the freedom of your glades!
