Poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

A Farewell to Wales

On Leaving That Country with My Children

THE SOUND of thy streams in my spirit I bear,—
Farewell, and a blessing be with thee, green land!
On thy hearths, on thy halls, on thy pure mountain air,
On the chords of the harp, and the minstrel’s free hand,
From the love of my soul with my tears it is shed,
As I leave thee, green land of my home and my dead!

I bless thee!—yet not for the beauty which dwells
In the heart of thy hills, on the rocks of thy shore;
And not for the memory set deep in thy dells,
Of the bard and the hero, the mighty of yore;
And not for thy songs of those proud ages fled,—
Green land, poet land of my home and my dead!

I bless thee for all the true bosoms that beat
Where’er a low hamlet smiles up to thy skies;
For thy cottage hearths burning the stranger to greet,
For the soul that shines forth from thy children’s kind eyes!
May the blessing, like sunshine, about thee be spread,
Green land of my childhood, my home, and my dead!

1. Joan of Arc in Rheims
2. The Music of St. Patrick’s
3. The Rock of Cader Idris
4. Eryri Wen
5. Lines Written for the Album at Rosanna

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