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(From Part III)
THERE is a land, of every land the pride, | |
| Beloved by heaven o’er all the world beside; | |
| Where brighter suns dispense serener light, | |
| And milder moons emparadise the night; | |
| A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth, | 5 |
| Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth; | |
| The wandering mariner, whose eye explores | |
| The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores, | |
| Views not a realm so bountiful and fair | |
| Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air: | 10 |
| In every clime the magnet of his soul, | |
| Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole; | |
| For in this land of heaven’s peculiar grace, | |
| The heritage of nature’s noblest race, | |
| There is a spot of earth supremely blest, | 15 |
| A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest, | |
| Where man, creation’s tyrant, casts aside | |
| His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride, | |
| While in his softened looks benignly blend | |
| The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend: | 20 |
| Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife, | |
| Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life; | |
| In the clear heaven of her delightful eye, | |
| An angel-guard of loves and graces lie; | |
| Around her knees domestic duties meet, | 25 |
| And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet. | |
| —Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found? | |
| Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around: | |
| Oh, thou shalt find, howe’er thy footsteps roam, | |
| That land thy country, and that spot thy home. | 30 |
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| On Greenland’s rocks, o’er rude Kamschatka’s plains | |
| In pale Siberia’s desolate domains; | |
| When the wild hunter takes his lonely way, | |
| Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey | |
| The reindeer’s spoil, the ermine’s treasure shares, | 35 |
| And feasts his famine on the fat of bears | |
| Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas, | |
| Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze, | |
| Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain | |
| Plunging down headlong through the whirling main | 40 |
| —His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye | |
| Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky; | |
| And dearer far than Cæsar’s palace-dome, | |
| His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home. | |
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| O’er China’s garden-fields and peopled floods; | 45 |
| In California’s pathless world of woods: | |
| Round Andes’ heights, where winter from his throne | |
| Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone; | |
| By the gay borders of Bermuda’s isles, | |
| Where spring with everlasting verdure smiles; | 50 |
| On pure Madeira’s vine-robed hills of health; | |
| In Java’s swamps of pestilence and wealth; | |
| Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink | |
| ’Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates’ brink; | |
| On Carmel’s crest; by Jordan’s reverend stream, | 55 |
| Where Canaan’s glories vanished like a dream; | |
| Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes’ graves, | |
| And Rome’s vast ruins darken Tiber’s waves; | |
| Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails | |
| Her subject mountains and dishonoured vales; | 60 |
| Where Albion’s rocks exult amidst the sea, | |
| Around the beauteous isle of liberty; | |
| —Man, through all ages of revolving time, | |
| Unchanging man, in every varying clime, | |
| Deems his own land of every land the pride, | 65 |
| Beloved by heaven o’er all the world beside; | |
| His home the spot of earth supremely blest, | |
| A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest. | |
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