“This King, who makes earth what it is,—
King David bending to his toil!
O lord and master of the soil,
How envied in thy loyal bliss!
“Long live the land we loved in youth,—
That world with blue skies bent about,
Where never entered ugly doubt!
Long live the simple, homely truth!
“Can true hearts love some far snow-land,
Some bleak Alaska bought with gold?
God’s laws are old as love is old;
And Home is something near at hand.
“Yea, change yon river’s course; estrange
The seven sweet stars; make hate divide
The full moon from the flowing tide,—
But this old truth ye cannot change.
“I begged a land as begging bread;
I begged of these brave mountaineers
To share their sorrows, share their tears;
To weep as they wept, with their dead.
“They did consent. The mountain town
Was mine to love, and valley lands.
That night the barefoot monk came down
And laid my two bags in my hands!
“On! On! And oh the load I bore!
Why, once I dreamed my soul was lead;
Dreamed once it was a body dead!
It made my cold, hard bosom sore.
“I dragged that body forth and back—
O conscience, what a baying hound!
Nor frozen seas nor frosted ground
Can throw this bloodhound from his track.
“In farthest Russia I lay down
A dying man, at last to rest;
I felt such load upon my breast
As seamen feel, who sinking drown.
“That night, all chill and desperate,
I sprang up, for I could not rest;
I tore the two bags from my breast,
And dashed them in the burning grate.