| |
| IT is not for what you are or do, | |
| Or for any treasures rare, | |
| That I turn my steps and heart to you, | |
| But for the name you bear. | |
| |
| Ancestral name! that must cross the sea | 5 |
| Its farthest fame to know, | |
| And to other soil transplanted be, | |
| That its proudest branch might grow. | |
| |
| It is not that your minster-pile | |
| Looks proudly toward the deep,— | 10 |
| The loftiest tower of Britain’s isle | |
| In valley or on steep,— | |
| |
| But that beneath that lordly tower | |
| A simple chapel stands, | |
| Which binds with an atoning power | 15 |
| Two great and kindred lands. | |
| |
| In days long gone it caught the sound | |
| Of Cotton’s earnest tongue; | |
| Now freshly is his memory found | |
| His wonted haunts among. | 20 |
| |
| Prelatic England drove him forth | |
| Beyond the Western main; | |
| Free-thoughted England owns his worth, | |
| And bids him back again. | |
| |
| Back in the name the chapel wears,— | 25 |
| Proscribed and then forgot. | |
| That tablet’s face more than repairs | |
| The honors of the spot. | |
| |
| For here from afar the inscription came | |
| By our statesman-scholar sent, | 30 |
| Reading, “Lest longer such a name | |
| Should stay in banishment.” | |
| |
| The brazen plate, so simply grand, | |
| Is framed in Norman stone; | |
| The characters from English land, | 35 |
| The writer from our own. | |
| |
| Stand of forgotten feuds a sign, | |
| And the world’s brighter age! | |
| Read on, long hence, thy filial line, | |
| Thou quaintly graven page. | 40 |
| |
| Say, that henceforth the soul’s full thought | |
| Need not in silence die; | |
| Nor one true man, all conscience-fraught, | |
| Must suffer or must fly. | |
| |
| Say, that two sovereign powers unite, | 45 |
| Each on her ocean shore, | |
| To keep Faith, Friendship, Freedom bright, | |
| From this time evermore. | |
| |
| Hail and farewell, St. Butolph’s fane, | |
| Seen in my thoughts so long! | 50 |
| They failed to span your broad domain, | |
| And did your grandeur wrong. | |
| |
| Hail and farewell, St. Butolph’s town! | |
| How dear that parent name! | |
| And no ill-favored brow I crown | 55 |
| With that auspicious claim. | |
| |
