Still may I love, beloved of thee,
My own fair city of the sea!
Where moulders back to kindred dust
The mother who my childhood nurst,
And strove, with ill-requited toil,
To till a rough, ungrateful soil;
Yet kindly spired by Heaven to know
That Faith's reward is sure, though slow,
And see the prophet's mantle grace
The rudest scion of her race.
And while around thy seaward shore
The Atlantic doth its surges pour,
(Those verdant isles, thy bosom-gems,)
May Temples be thy diadems;
Spire after spire in beauty rise,
Still pointing upward to the skies
Unwritten sermons, and rebukes of love,
To point thy toiling throngs to worlds above.
