Bright rovers of all summer skies,
I follow them with wistful eyes
To-morrow's sunset they will be
A thousand leagues by land and sea
Beyond this wintry hemisphere
Heaven gathers round their joyous wings
The sunlight of perpetual springs,
Soft airs and fragrant blossomings
Through all the glad round year.

I hear as though I did not hear,
Along the upland fields remote,
The plough-boy's whistle, silver clear:
For hark' the herds-man's graver note,
Who hums beneath the orchard boughs,
The ballad of that grand old man,
Who marshalled freedom's battle van,
And fell,--no laurel round his brows.

To-day the hero-martyr's grave
Is shaken by the armed tread
Of patriotic soldiers o'er his head
Not by the footsteps of one slave!

So grows the work that he began,
Wrought out in slow and toilsome ways,
Yet ever building through the days,
A grander heritage for man.

Oh! harvest years, foretold so long!