Sweet murmurs in mystical measures Come soothingly over my soul, Where voices of babyish pleasures And echoes of lullabies roll; The struggles of all my endeavor Are bound in the darkest of thongs; Then sing me the old songs, mother, Then sing me the dear old songs. I fain would return in my dreaming To years that proclaimed me a boy, When gladness was happily beaming And life was a musical toy; My sorrow has never Nepenthe, My woe in its bitterness throngs; Then sing me the old songs, mother, Then sing me the dear old songs. TWO LIVES. Two infants in their cradles lie, Where lullabies of peace In gentle strains of tender music die. And carols never cease. Two urchins o'er the meadow lands Are bounding in their plays, Where sweet enjoyment with angelic hands Winds gladness o'er the days. Two boys, where golden fancies bless, Repose in sunny beams, And muse away the hours of happiness On couches made of dreams. Two men upon a summer sea Are toiling, brave and strong, Where pleasures roll their elfin harmony And labor ends in song. Two gray-haired sages, silvered o'er, In life meet once again, To name the wondrous happiness they bore Among their fellow-men. Two graves forever hide the twain Who found, in all their years, No secret shadows, where unbroken pain Held fountains full of tears. Two lives have passed from human reach, And few have heard of them, But joy had not been better served if each Had worn a diadem. Ah, bosoms here are strangely blest With perfect bliss that glows, And he above all others lives the best, Who has the fewest woes! "AWAY, AWAY, FROM THE SULTRY WAYS." Away, away, from the sultry ways Where the pleasures fall and fade, To the bannered corn and the meadowed bloom And the forest's cooling shade! Afar, afar, from the rooms of care With the toils of life distressed, To the grassy hills and the fragrant slopes And the quiet vales of rest! Away from the weary, dusty town, Where the sorrows dim the days, To the sleeping lake and the silent stream And the wildwood's tangled ways! To margins wide of the woodland pools, Where the wild birds troll their songs, Where the lilies laugh and the willows wave, And the pleasures dance in throngs! The dark-eyed nymphs and the fairy elves In their robes of laughing smiles, In the forests romp 'neath the leafy trees, Through the narrow long-drawn aisles. The bannered corn and the golden wheat In the ties of bliss are bound; The sweetest joys and highest hopes On the shady farms are found. The raptures reign in the holy scenes, And the old grow young once more, To roam the meadows and live again In the happy years of yore.