heartsong

English

Etymology

heart +‎ song

Noun

heartsong (plural heartsongs)

1. (obsolete) A heartwarming song or poem.
   • 1895, Johnson Brigham, Midland Monthly Magazine - Volume 4, page 572:

     How the crest-hunting rich and the wealth-seeking wearers of inherited honors and the popularity-seeking and place-hunting politicians whom their promoters half satirically style “great” dwindle when compared with this man, who with a few simple little heartsongs had won the love of children, had found a place in the hearts of those who mourn and hand entered the home and made it the happier and better for his presence!

   • 1896, Self Culture - Volume 3, page 524:

     Many of his lyrics are heartsongs that will chord with human life as long as it has sorrows and aspirations.

   • 1917, The Educator-journal - Volume 18, page 229:

     “Home, Sweet Home” has been sung by the world's Greatest Artists for the Viotrola; after the class has heard the story of "the Homeless Bard of Home” it may sing this famous heartsong with the band accompaniment on Victor Record 18145.

2. A song or message that is deeply heartfelt.
   • 1883, University of Michigan Student Religious Association, Bulletin, page 191:

     With hymning we will praise Thee, Our heartsong we lift up to Thee, Thou glorious evermore;

   • 1893, Elizabeth Susan MacLeod, Carols of Canada, Etc., Etc, page 31:

     So we, when our Great High Priest shall come, Begirt of power, enrobed of state, And the peoples of ten thousand isles With eager joy His advent wait, Shall hail, with a heartsong of rapture, His step on our sin-furrowed strand ; Shall march, with the grand triumphal throng, In the glow of a God-lit land.

   • 1920, The Railroad Trainman - Volume 37, page 215:

     Over life's long trail a-winding, We wend our onward way, Sometimes with spirits broken, Sometimes with heartsongs gay.

3. The expression of a person's inner essence, underlying identity, and reason for existence.
   • 1863, Sartor Resartus (1831).: Lectures on Heroes (1840)., page 259:

     All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heartsong like this : one feels as if it might survive, still of importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable combinations, and had ceased individually to be.

   • 2005, Roger Calverley, The Primal Runes: Archetypes of Invocation and Empowerment, →ISBN:

     The words he speaks carry a familiar message. He lifts me up to sing my infinite heartsong. He is a musical tone that rings out to embrace the morning sky.

   • 2010, Erjan J. Slavin, The Tale of the Mirror (& The Wishing Tree Poetry), →ISBN, page 72:

     To be sung to in this way by the entire faery kingdom, each member of it born from the heartsong of a camper, was truly a delight that not many, I believe, have known.