Adieu, the city’s ceaseless hum,
The haunts of sensual life, adieu!
Green fields, and silent glens we come,
To spend this bright spring-day with you.
Whether the hills and vales shall gleam
With beauty, is for us to choose;
For leaf and blossom, rock and stream,
Are coloured with the spirit’s hues.
Here, to the seeking soul, is brought
A nobler view of human fate,
And higher feeling, higher thought,
And glimpses of a higher state.
Through change of time, on sea and shore,
Serenely nature smiles away;
Yon infinite blue sky bends o’er
Our world, as at the primal day.
The self-renewing earth is moved
With youthful life each circling year;
And flowers that Ceres’ daughter loved
At Enna, now are blooming here.
Glad nature will this truth reveal,
That God is ours and we are His.
O friends, my friends! what joy to feel
That He our loving Father is!