| |
| HOW green the earth, how blue the sky, | |
| How pleasant all the days that pass, | |
| Here where the British settlers lie | |
| Beneath their cloaks of grass! | |
| |
| Here ancient peace resumes her round, | 5 |
| And rich from toil stand hill and plain; | |
| Men reap and store; but they sleep sound, | |
| The men who sow’d the grain. | |
| |
| Hard to the plough their hands they put, | |
| And wheresoe’er the soil had need | 10 |
| The furrow drave, and underfoot | |
| They sow’d themselves for seed. | |
| |
| Ah! not like him whose hand made yield | |
| The brazen kine with fiery breath, | |
| And over all the Colchian field | 15 |
| Strew’d far the seeds of death; | |
| |
| Till, as day sank, awoke to war | |
| The seedlings of the dragon’s teeth, | |
| And death ran multiplied once more | |
| Across the hideous heath. | 20 |
| |
| But rich in flocks be all these farms, | |
| And fruitful be the fields which hide | |
| Brave eyes that loved the light, and arms | |
| That never clasp’d a bride! | |
| |
| O willing hearts turn’d quick to clay, | 25 |
| Glad lovers holding death in scorn, | |
| Out of the lives ye cast away | |
| The coming race is born. | |
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