My childhood home I see again

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain
There's pleasure it too.
O memory! thou Midway world
Twixt Earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dearemy shadows rise.



And, freed from all that's earthly
Seem, hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light,
As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight Chase's day;
As bugle---tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;


As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list  it's roar....
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.
Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play
And playmates loved so well.


Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.
The friends l left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped,
Young childhood grown, strong man hood gray,
And half of all the dead.



I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a gave,
I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hallow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.



But here's an object more of dread
Than outgh the grave contains
A human form with reason fled
While wretched life remains.
Poor child! Once of genius bright,
A fortune, favoured child....
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A Haggard mad--wild.



Poor child! I have ne'er forgot,
When first with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought
Another strove to kill.
When terror Spead, and neighbors ran,
Your dangerous strength to bind;
And soon, a howling crazy man
Your limbs were fast confined.


How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd,
With burning eye--balls glared....
A begged, and swore, and wept and prayed
With maniac laughter? Joined
How fearful were those signs displayed
By pangs that killed thy mind!



I've heard it oft, as if I dreamed
Far distance, sweet, and lone
The funeral dirge,it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone,
To drink it's strains I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Like a tarzan in the tropical jungle,
Raw_without complex innovations,
Forged with a distinct pettiness,
Haunting in the lee of forests,
Not sceptical of any immediate vicinity,
The childhood home again I see
Of how my plans come undone.

Now fare thee well-more tho the cause
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs, by times kind laws,
Hast lost the power to know,
O death! Thou awe--inspiring prince,
That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost those tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him lingring here?
"My childhood home I see again"