The Beaufort Exile’s Lament
Now chant me a dirge for the Isles of the Sea,
And sing the sad wanderer’s psalm—
Ye women and children in exile that flee
From the land of the orange and palm.
Lament for your homes, for the house of your God,
Now the haunt of the vile and the low;
Lament for the graves of your fathers, now trod
By the foot of the Puritan foe!
No longer for thee, when the sables of night
Are fading like shadows away,
Does the mocking-bird, drinking the first beams of light,
Praise God for the birth of a day.
No longer for thee, when the rays are now full,
Do the oaks form an evergreen glade;
While the drone of the locust overhead, seemed to lull
The cattle that rest in the shade.
No longer for thee does the soft-shining moon
Silver o’er the green waves of the bay;
Nor at evening, the notes of the wandering loon
Bid farewell to the sun’s dying ray.
Nor when night drops her pall over river and shore,
And scatters eve’s merry-voiced throng,
Does there rise, keeping time to the stroke of the oar,
The wild chant of the sacred boat-song.
Then the revellers would cease ere the red wine they’d quaff,
The traveller would pause on his way;
And maidens would hush their low silvery laugh,
To list to the negro’s rude lay.
“Going home! going home!” methinks I now hear
At the close of each solemn refrain;
’Twill be many a day, aye, and many a year,
Ere ye’ll sing that dear word “Home” again.
Your noble sons slain, on the battle-field lie,
Your daughters’ mid strangers now roam;
Your aged and helpless in poverty sigh
O’er the days when they once had a home.
“Going home! going home!” for the exile alone
Can those words sweep the chords of the soul,
And raise from the grave the loved ones who are gone,
As the tide-waves of time backward roll.
“Going home! going home!” Ah! how many who pine,
Dear Beaufort, to press thy green soul,
Ere then will have passed to shores brighter than thine—
Will have gone home at last to their God!