Hast thou heard of a shell on the margin of ocean,

Whose pearly recesses the echoes still keep,

Of the music it caught when, with tremulous motion,

It join’d in the concert pour’d forth by the deep?

And fables have told us, when far inland carried

To the waste sandy desert, or dark ivied cave,

In its musical chambers some murmurs have tarried

It learn’d long before of the wind and the wave.

Oh! thus should our spirits, which bear many a token

They are not of earth, but are exiles while here,

Preserve in their banishment, pure and unbroken,

Some sweet treasur’d notes of their own native sphere.

Though the dark clouds of sin may at times hover o’er us,

And the discords of earth may their melody mar,

Yet to spirits redeem’d some faint notes of that chorus,

Which is borne by the bless’d, will be brought from afar!