Hearken your hymn of praise, PENATES! to your shrines I come for rest, There only to be found. Often at eve, Amid my wanderings I have seen far off The lonely light that spake of comfort there, It told my heart of many a joy of home, And my poor heart was sad. When I have gazed From some high eminence on goodly vales And cots and villages embower'd below, The thought would rise that all to me was strange Amid the scene so fair, nor one small spot Where my tir'd mind might rest and call it home, There is a magic in that little word; It is a mystic circle that surrounds Comforts and Virtues never known beyond The hallowed limit. Often has my heart Ached for that quiet haven; haven'd now, I think of those in this world's wilderness Who wander on and find no home of rest Till to the grave they go! them POVERTY Hollow-eyed fiend, the child of WEALTH and POWER, Bad offspring of worse parents, aye afflicts, Cankering with her foul mildews the chill'd heart-- Them WANT with scorpion scourge drives to the den Of GUILT--them SLAUGHTER with the price of death Buys for her raven brood. Oh not on them GOD OF ETERNAL JUSTICE! not on them Let fall thy thunder! HOUSEHOLD DEITIES! Then only shall be Happiness on earth When Man shall feel your sacred power, and love Your tranquil joys; then shall the city stand A huge void sepulchre, and rising fair Amid the ruins of the palace pile The Olive grow, there shall the TREE OF PEACE Strike its roots deep and flourish. This the state Shall bless the race redeemed of Man, when WEALTH And POWER and all their hideous progeny Shall sink annihilate, and all mankind Live in the equal brotherhood of LOVE. Heart-calming hope and sure! for hitherward Tend all the tumults of the troubled world, Its woes, its wisdom, and its wickedness Alike: so he hath will'd whose will is just. Meantime, all hoping and expecting all In patient faith, to you, DOMESTIC GODS! I come, studious of other lore than song, Of my past years the solace and support: Yet shall my Heart remember the past years With honest pride, trusting that not in vain Lives the pure song of LIBERTY and TRUTH. [Footnote 1: Hence one explanation of the name Penates, because they were supposed to reign in the inmost Heavens.] [Footnote 2: This was the belief of the ancient Hetrusci, who called them Consentes and Complicces] [Footnote 3: Oft, tho' Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems. MILTON.] [Footnote 4: One of the Ways and Means of the Tyrant Nabis. If one of his Subjects refused to lend him money, he commanded him to embrace his Apega; the statue of a beautiful Woman so formed as to clasp the victim to her breast, in which a pointed dagger was concealed.] [Footnote 5: