LOVE OF COUNTRY
Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concenter’d all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.
—Scott.
THE DAFFODILS.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
—Wordsworth.
A CHILD’S THOUGHT OF GOD.
They say that God lives very high:
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see God. And why?
And if you dig down in the mines
You never see him in the gold,
Though, from him, all that’s glory shines.
God is so good, he wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across his face—
Like secrets kept for love untold.
But still I feel that his embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place:
As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses’ pressure,
Half waking me at night; and said,
“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?”
—Mrs. Browning.
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.[13]
Am I a king that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine?
Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong:
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
Of old was sung by me.
Well I remember it in all its prime,
When in the summer time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.
There by the blacksmith’s forge, beside the street,
Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.
And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.
And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,
Have, by a hearth-stone found a home at last,
And whisper of the past.
The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide.
But, seated in this chair,
I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of time.
I see again, as one in vision sees,
The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children’s voices call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.
I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
The iron white with heat.
And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
This day a jubilee,
And to my more than three-score years and ten
Brought back my youth again.
The heart hath its own memory, like the mind
And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
The giver’s loving thought.
Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,
And make these branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.
—Longfellow.
A SONG OF EASTER.[14]
Sing, children, sing,
And the lily censers swing;
Sing that life and joy are waking and that
Death no more is king.
Sing the happy, happy tumult of the slowly bright’ning Spring;
Sing, little children, sing,
Sing, children, sing,
Winter wild has taken wing.
Fill the air with the sweet tidings till the frosty echoes ring.
Along the eaves, the icicles no longer cling;
And the crocus in the garden lifts its bright face to the sun;
And in the meadow, softly the brooks begin to run;
And the golden catkins, swing
In the warm air of the Spring—
Sing, little children, sing.
Sing, children, sing,
The lilies white you bring
In the joyous Easter morning, for hopes are blossoming,
And as earth her shroud of snow from off her breast doth fling,
So may we cast our fetters off in God’s eternal Spring;
So may we find release at last from sorrow and from pain,
Soon may we find our childhood’s calm, delicious dawn again.
Sweet are your eyes, O little ones, that look with smiling grace,
Without a shade of doubt or fear into the future’s face.
Sing, sing in happy chorus, with happy voices tell
That death is life, and God is good, and all things shall be well.
That bitter day shall cease
In warmth and light and peace,
That winter yields to Spring—
Sing, little children, sing.
—Celia Thaxter.
THE JOY OF THE HILLS.[15]
I ride on the mountain tops, I ride;
I have found my life and am satisfied.
Onward I ride in the blowing oats,
Checking the field lark’s rippling notes—
Lightly I sweep from steep to steep;
O’er my head through branches high
Come glimpses of deep blue sky;
The tall oats brush my horse’s flanks:
Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks;
A bee booms out of the scented grass;
A jay laughs with me as I pass.
I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget
Life’s hoard of regret—
All the terror and pain of a chafing chain.
Grind on, O cities, grind! I leave you a blur behind.
I am lifted elate—the skies expand;
Here the world’s heaped gold is a pile of sand.
Let them weary and work in their narrow walls;
I ride with the voices of waterfalls.
I swing on as one in a dream—I swing.
Down the very hollows, I shout, I sing.
The world is gone like an empty word;
My body’s a bough in the wind,—my heart a bird.
—Edwin Markham.