The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

Uprising from the orange-leaves,
     The tall pagoda's turrets glow;
O'er graceful shaft and fretted eaves,
     Its verdant web the myrtle weaves,
And hangs in flowering wreaths below;
     And where the clustered palms eclipse
The moonbeams, from its marble lips
     The fountain's silver waters flow.

Strange beauty fills the earth and air,
     The fragrant grove and flowering tree,
And yet my thoughts are wandering where
     My native rocks lie bleak and bare,
A weary way beyond the sea.
     The yearning spirit is not here;
It lingers on a spot more dear
     Than India's brightest bowers to me.

Methinks I tread the well-known street—
     The tree my childhood loved is there,
Its bare-worn roots are at my feet,
     And through its open boughs I meet
White glimpses of the place of prayer;
     And unforgotten eyes again
Are glancing through the cottage pane,
     Than Asia's lustrous eyes more fair.

Oh, holy haunts! oh, childhood's home!
     Where, now, my wandering heart, is thine?
Here, where the dusky heathen come
     To bow before the deaf and dumb,
Dead idols of their own design;
     Where in their worshipped river's tide
The infant sinks, and on its side
     The widow's funeral altars shine!

Here, where, mid light and song and flowers,
     The priceless soul in ruin lies;
Lost, dead to all those better powers
     Which link this fallen world of ours
To God's clear-shining Paradise;
     And wrong and shame and hideous crime
Are like the foliage of their clime,
     The unshorn growth of centuries!

Turn, then, my heart; thy home is here;
     No other now remains for thee:
The smile of love, and friendship's tear,
     The tones that melted on thine ear,