Linger, oh, gentle Time, Linger, oh, radiant grace of bright To-day!  Let not the hours’ chime Call thee away, But linger near me still with fond delay.

Linger, for thou art mine! 
What dearer treasures can the future hold? 
What sweeter flowers than thine
Can she unfold? 
What secrets tell my heart thou hast not told?

Oh, linger in thy flight! 
For shadows gather round, and should we part,
A dreary starless night
May fill my heart,—­
Then pause and linger yet ere thou depart.

Linger, I ask no more,—­
Thou art enough for ever—­thou alone;
What future can restore,
When thou art flown,
All that I hold from thee and call my own?

VERSE:  HOMEWARD BOUND

I have seen a fiercer tempest,
Known a louder whirlwind blow;
I was wrecked off red Algiers,
Six-and-thirty years ago. 
Young I was, and yet old seamen
Were not strong or calm as I;
While life held such treasures for me,
I felt sure I could not die.

Life I struggled for—­and saved it;
Life alone—­and nothing more;
Bruised, half dead, alone and helpless,
I was cast upon the shore. 
I feared the pitiless rocks of Ocean;
So the great sea rose—­and then
Cast me from her friendly bosom,
On the pitiless hearts of men.

Gaunt and dreary ran the mountains,
With black gorges, up the land;
Up to where the lonely Desert
Spreads her burning, dreary sand: 
In the gorges of the mountains,
On the plain beside the sea,
Dwelt my stern and cruel masters,
The black Moors of Barbary.

Ten long years I toiled among them,
Hopeless—­as I used to say;
Now I know Hope burnt within me
Fiercer, stronger, day by day: 
Those dim years of toil and sorrow
Like one long dark dream appear;
One long day of weary waiting—­
Then each day was like a year.

How I cursed the land—­my prison;
How I cursed the serpent sea—­
And the Demon Fate that showered
All her curses upon me;
I was mad, I think—­God pardon
Words so terrible and wild—­
This voyage would have been my last one,
For I left a wife and child.

Never did one tender vision
Fade away before my sight,
Never once through all my slavery,
Burning day or dreary night;
In my soul it lived, and kept me,
Now I feel, from black despair,
And my heart was not quite broken,
While they lived and blest me there.

When at night my task was over,
I would hasten to the shore;
(All was strange and foreign inland,
Nothing I had known before;)
Strange looked the bleak mountain passes,
Strange the red glare and black shade,
And the Oleanders, waving
To the sound the fountains made.

Then I gazed at the great Ocean,
Till she grew a friend again;
And because she knew old England,
I forgave her all my pain: 
So the blue still sky above me,
With its white clouds’ fleecy fold,
And the glimmering stars, (though brighter,)
Looked like home and days of old.