The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler/My Cottage Home

My Cottage Home
My cottage home! my cottage home! How beautiful it lies, Amid its quiet loveliness, Beneath our bright blue skies. A stranger's eye might mark it not, Nor deem that it was fair;— To me it is a lovely spot, For those I love are there.

In summer there are wild flowers round, And the tall forest weaves A drapery of light and shade, With its green and pleasant leaves; And thousand birds are pouring out, To the gay and singing breeze, From the wild joys of their leaping hearts, A thousand melodies.

The shadowing of an oak's green boughs Is flung the low roof o'er; And clambering vines their blossoms hang About the open door. And round the harvest's ripening wealth Waves in its yellow light; And the feathery tassels of the maize Bend gracefully and slight.

But were it thousand times more fair— If o'er the fertile soil Oppression shook her manacles, And scourged the slave to toil— To me the rudest desert wild Were better for my home, So never on its arid breeze The voice of wrong might come.

But round my home, my cottage home, The tyrant never treads, And o'er the field's luxuriant wealth No slave his sad tear sheds. And were it not that I have learn'd In other scenes to know Of deeds of cruelty and wrong, And of the oppress'd ones’ woe— And were it not that still a tale Is wafted on the air, Telling of fearful injuries, And anguish and despair; I might, perchance, almost forget The guilt and wrongs of earth, And deem that brightness gleam'd, alone, Around the household hearth.

But woe for man's dark cruelty! His selfishness and pride! For him the earth is drench'd with tears, With human life-blood dyed. In his own freedom glorying, He lifts his voice on high, While on his brother's shrinking form His crushing fetters lie.