Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 19.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

The low, soft music of the Pines.

Oh there's music in the glad gurgling waters
     As they bound over rocks and through dells,
A music that lends an enchantment
     To deep forest's moss-festooned cells.

There's music in the low heaving billows
     As they break on the far distant lea,
When the sea nymphs and dolphins are sporting,
     But there's music far sweeter for me.

There's music in the soft-sighing zephyr,
     Where lovers oft linger to list,
And hear in its harmonious measures
     A song of long-promised bliss.

All nature's a grand choral organ
     That swells with melodious chimes,
But the sweetest of all nature's music
     Are the tones of the murmuring pines.

There's music for stern, reckless manhood,
     Where the storm king rides on the wave,
When the bark of the tempest-tossed sailor
     Madly drives to a watery grave.

When the winds lash the waves into fury,
     And the thunders and wild winds combine,
But more fearfully grand is the music,
     When the hurricane plays with the pine.

Then tell me not of the music
     That is held in the reveling hall,
When the feet of the light-hearted dancers
     Glide gaily at Terpsichore's call.

There's music around the home of my childhood,
     Where clamber the ivy and vine,
And I long to sit neath the shadows
     Of the low, soft, musical pine.

Midnight Musings.

The fire burned briskly in the grate,
     The morn was dark aud dreary,
A captive in his cell sat lone,
     Thoughtful, watchful, weary.

He thought of home, of kindred ties,
     Long broke but not yet severed;
He thought of dear ones in the skies,
     That had left the earth forever.

Without the wall of his prison cell
     Discordant music met his ear.
What was it in the morn's dull cloak?
     He'd nothing but his God to fear.

As the morning light began to dawn,
     The sleepers awoke one another;
They knew not the thoughts of the one at the fire.
     He'd been thinking all night of his mother.