From my childhood days, from my childhood days,
Rings an old song's plaintive tone—
Oh, how long the ways, oh, how long the ways
I since have gone!

What the swallow sang, what the swallow sang,
In spring or in autumn warm—
Do its echoes hang, do its echoes hang
About the farm?

“When I went away, when I went away,
Full coffers and chests were there;
When I came today, when I came today,
All, all was bare!”

Childish lips so wise, childish lips so wise,
With a lore as rich as gold,
Knowing all birds' cries, knowing all birds' cries,

All the Universe, one mighty sign, is shown;
God hath myriads of creative acts unknown:
None hath seen them, of the races jinn and men,
None hath news brought from that realm far off from ken.
Never shall thy mind or reason reach that strand,
Nor can tongue the King's name utter of that land.
Since 'tis His each nothingness with life to vest,
Trouble is there ne'er at all to His behest.
Eighteen thousand worlds, from end to end,
Do not with Him one atom's worth transcend.

With liberal heart to every friend
A bowl or caldron would I send;
Or tripods, which the Grecians gave,
As rich rewards, to heroes brave;
Nor should the meanest gift be thine,
If the rich works of art were mine,
By Scopas, or Parrhasius wrought,
With animating skill who taught
The shapeless stone with life to glow,
Or bade the breathing colours flow,
To imitate, in every line,
The form or human or divine.
But I nor boast the curious store,
And you nor want, nor wish for more;
'T is yours the joys of verse to know,

Like to a stranger in a foreign strand
I 've dreamed—God knows how oft.
Now I go home. Already, far from land
I hear the storm aloft.
To unknown realms beyond the pillared gates
Of mighty Heracles
I steer me where the isle of islands waits
Enshrined in sapphire seas.

There, sunlit in yon ocean's broad expanse,
Lies Ithaca, mine isle,
Where the white-arching boughs of fruit-trees glance,
And billows die the while
Mid sedge, as dies a harp's faint evening song,
Love-muffled, on the ear.
There, be the voyage ne'er so hard and long,

When at your desk you sit with studious look
Forgetting all the world for one small book,

And she who is your all comes up behind you
And nestles, eager in her arms to bind you,

Don't gruffly bid her leave you, don't demur,
But leave your book and go along with her!

Your dusty tomes will bide with you for aye,
You do not know how long your love will stay.

There 's many a lonely man with care-worn brow
Would gladly be disturbed as you are now.

Let love illuminate in shining gold
Your book with pictures lovely to behold!

The old pond, aye! and the sound of a frog leaping into the water.

Where is the love that, both soon and late,
Changeless till death in whatever fate,
Guards like an angel above us waking,
Asking for nothing, but all forsaking?
Go search the earth and you 'll find but one;
Such is a mother's deep love alone.

All bonds are selfish compared with this;
Even the rapturous bridegroom's kiss,
The joy a sister's embrace affords us,
Or childish arms that are stretching towards us.
Our truest friend some return has sought,
Only a mother has no such thought.

Does she recall through the long-past years

“O lonely trumpeter, coasting down the sky,
Like a winter leaf blown from the bur-oak tree
By whipping winds, and flapping silverly
Against the sun,—I know your lonely cry.

I know the worn wild heart that bends your flight
And circles you above this beckoning lake,
Eager of neck, to find the honking drake
Who speaks of reedy refuge for the night.

I know the sudden rapture that you fling
In answer to our friendly gander's call—
Halloo! Beware decoys!—or you will fall
With a silver bullet whistling in your wing!

Once they ploughed the fruitful field,
Helped the reaper gain his yield,
Came to eve with sweet content,
Browsing when the day was spent.
Now they lie with mangled hide,
Fallen in the carnage tide.

What to them the sounding phrase
Which explains the bloody ways?
Honour, place or racial stem,
Slav or Teuton, what to them?
Torn and dead or death denied,
Fallen in the carnage tide.

Now they wage the battle hot,
Plunging under shell and shot,
Charging in the cannon's breath
Bearing dealers of the death,
Till in agony they bide,

I wandered out this moonlight night,
I think that some one hurried by,
But ah, the clouds obscured the light …
I only heard a wind-blown sigh!