Page:Poems of home and country (IA poemsofhomecount01smit).pdf/12

 ful sympathies, physical vitality, and an accurate memory in full and healthy exercise. His poems illusstrate his life; and old and young alike, of whatever section, party, or creed, can find wholesome stimulant as well as a bright example in the pleasing, harmonious record.

The selections, their arrangement, and their relation to each other and to his life, have had his cordial sanction. Among the nearly three hundred and fifty odes. and poems thus grouped or distributed, is represented nearly every possible phase of domestic, social, religious, and civic life. Nearly sixty patriotic hymns, or odes, supplement "America;" and one of these, "Patriot Sons of Patriot Sires," or, "A Song for Young America," written on Washington's birthday, 1894, shows how tenderly his heart sympathizes with the youth of his native land. Another, bearing as its title, "My Native Land," was composed immediately after his return from a two-years' absence in India and other remote foreign countries.

Sacred Psalmody has been equally enriched by his contributions. One of these, "The morning light is breaking," was contemporaneous in origin with "My country, 't is of thee," both having been written while he was a student at Andover Theological Seminary, in 1832. Another, "The Lone Star," has a record that will endear his name to the countless millions of India so long as time endures. As his classmate's "Old Ironside rescued the frigate "Constitution" from demolition, so did this poem preserve in more enduring form than oak or bronze the mission altar at Telugu, India, in the year 1868.