laying in thy streets,
Nor sounds of echoing toil invade thy green retreats.

Rich vines around thy graceful columns wind,
Young buds unfold, the dewy skies to bless,
Yet no fresh wreaths thine inmates wake to bind--
Prune no wild spray, nor pleasant garden dress--
From no luxuriant flower its fragrance press--
The golden sunsets through enwoven trees
Tremble and flash, but they no praise express--
They lift no casement to the balmy breeze,
For fairest scenes of earth have lost their power to please.

A ceaseless tide of emigration flows
On through thy gates, for thou forbiddest none
In thy close-curtained couches to repose,
Or lease thy narrow tenements of stone,
It matters not where first the sunbeam shone
Upon their cradle--'neath the foliage free
Where dark palmettos fleck the torrid zone,
Or 'mid the icebergs of the Arctic sea--
Thou dost no questions ask; all are at home with thee.

One pledge alone they give, before their name
Is with thy peaceful denizens enrolled--
The vow of silence thou from each dost claim,
More strict and stern than Sparta's rule of old,
Bidding no secrets of thy realm be told,
Nor slightest whisper from its precincts spread--
Sealing each whitened lip with signet cold,
To stamp the oath of fealty, ere they tread
Thy never-echoing halls, oh city of the dead!

'Mid scenes like thine, fond memories find their home,
For sweet it was to me, in childhood's hours,
'Neath every village church-yard's shade to roam,
Where humblest mounds were decked with grassy flowers,
And I have roamed where dear Mount Auburn towers,
Where Laurel-Hill a cordial welcome gave
To the rich tracery of its hallowed bowers,
And where, by quiet Lehigh's crystal wave,
The meek Moravian smooths his turf-embroidered grave:

Where too, in Scotia, o'er the Bridge of Sighs,
The Clyde's Necropolis uprears its head,
Or that old abbey's sacred turrets rise
Whose crypts contain proud Albion's noblest dead,--
And where, by leafy canopy o'erspread,
The lyre of Gray its pensive descant made--
And where, beside the dancing city's tread,
Famed Pere La Chaise all gorgeously displayed
Its meretricious robes, with chaplets over