On The Near Prospect Of Leaving Home

by Caroline Bowles Southey

Farewell, farewell, beloved home!
Haven of rest! a long farewell;
Where'er my weary footsteps roam,
With thee shall faithful memory dwell.

They tell me other bowers will rise
As fair, in fancy's future view;
They little think what tender ties,
Dear home! attach my heart to you!

Their happy childhood has not played,
Like mine, beneath thy sheltering roof;
Thou hast not fostered, in thy shade,
Their after years of happier youth.

They cannot know, they have not proved,
The sympathies that make thee dear;
They have not here possessed and loved:
They have not lost and sorrowed here.

In all around, they cannot see
Relics of hopes, and joys o'ercast;
They have not learned to live, like me,
On recollections of the past.

To watch (as misers watch their gold)
Tree, shrub, or flower, (frail, precious trust!)
Planted and reared in days of old,
By hands now mouldering in the dust;

To sanctify peculiar places,
Associated in memory's glass,
With circumstances , time, and faces,
That like a dream before me pass.

These are the feelings, this the hand,
Dear home! that knits my heart to thee;
No heart but mine can understand
How strong that secret sympathy.

1838