My joys are in memory lying,
    Still ardently happy with youth,
  When smiles in ambition were dying,
    And life was the vision of youth;
  My brow for your gentle caresses
    And kisses of tenderness longs;
  Then sing me the old songs, mother,
    Then sing me the dear old songs.

  Sweet murmurs in mystical measures
    Come soothingly over my soul,
  Where voices of babyish pleasures
    And echoes of lullabies roll;
  The struggles of all my endeavor
    Are bound in the darkest of thongs;
  Then sing me the old songs, mother,
    Then sing me the dear old songs.

  I fain would return in my dreaming
    To years that proclaimed me a boy,
  When gladness was happily beaming
    And life was a musical toy;
  My sorrow has never Nepenthe,
    My woe in its bitterness throngs;
  Then sing me the old songs, mother,
    Then sing me the dear old songs.

TWO LIVES.

  Two infants in their cradles lie,
    Where lullabies of peace
  In gentle strains of tender music die. 
    And carols never cease.

  Two urchins o’er the meadow lands
    Are bounding in their plays,
  Where sweet enjoyment with angelic hands
    Winds gladness o’er the days.

  Two boys, where golden fancies bless,
    Repose in sunny beams,
  And muse away the hours of happiness
    On couches made of dreams.

  Two men upon a summer sea
    Are toiling, brave and strong,
  Where pleasures roll their elfin harmony
    And labor ends in song.

  Two gray-haired sages, silvered o’er,
    In life meet once again,
  To name the wondrous happiness they bore
    Among their fellow-men.

  Two graves forever hide the twain
    Who found, in all their years,
  No secret shadows, where unbroken pain
    Held fountains full of tears.

  Two lives have passed from human reach,
    And few have heard of them,
  But joy had not been better served if each
    Had worn a diadem.

  Ah, bosoms here are strangely blest
    With perfect bliss that glows,
  And he above all others lives the best,
    Who has the fewest woes!

“AWAY, AWAY, FROM THE SULTRY WAYS.”

  Away, away, from the sultry ways
    Where the pleasures fall and fade,
  To the bannered corn and the meadowed bloom
    And the forest’s cooling shade!

  Afar, afar, from the rooms of care
    With the toils of life distressed,
  To the grassy hills and the fragrant slopes
    And the quiet vales of rest!

  Away from the weary, dusty town,
    Where the sorrows dim the days,
  To the sleeping lake and the silent stream
    And the wildwood’s tangled ways!

  To margins wide of the woodland pools,
    Where the wild birds troll their songs,
  Where the lilies laugh and the willows wave,
    And the pleasures dance in throngs!