Classic Poem

Voice of the twilight hour!
I list to thy Heaven-breathed tone,
In the tender sigh of the closing flower,
Or the soft wind's dying moan:
Thou speak'st of the hopes that smiled
On the bright spring-time of youth,
When a mother knelt, and in language mild,
A lesson, though simple, she taught her child —
'Twas a lesson of artless truth.

Voice of the twilight hour
How sweet is thy sound to me!
For my soul is entranced by thy soothing power,
And its sorrows are lost in thee:
Thou art heard in the trembling strings
Of the harp which the breezes wake;
In the bird, as her farewell note she sings
To the golden hues which the sunset flings
O'er the breast of the silver lake.

Thou speak'st of a brighter land —
Of a far off region fair,
And thy whispers are soft of a shadowy band,
And I know that the loved are there:
Voice of the twilight hour!
Ere thy Heaven-breathed tones depart,
Oh! speak in the sigh of the closing flower,
Or the winds that die in the greenwood bower,
Once more to my anxious heart.

Do those we have cherished here
In that land their love forget,
Though their home is a holier, happier sphere,
Oh! say, do they guard us yet?
But the twilight answered not;
And a voice from the distant hill
Replied as I stood on that lonely spot:
The friends thou hast cherished forget thee not,
And they love and they guard thee still.

'Twas the voice of the silent night —
And the earth and the ocean slept,
And the silent stars with their mellow light
O'er nature their vigils kept.
And I thought it were bliss to die,
To fade with the tints of even,
For gladly then would the spirit fly
On its angel-wings to the realms on high,
And meet with the lost in Heaven.