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| OUR Father Land! and wouldst thou know | |
| Why we should call it Father Land? | |
| It is that Adam here below | |
| Was made of earth by Nature’s hand; | |
| And he our father, made of earth, | 5 |
| Hath peopled earth on every hand; | |
| And we, in memory of his birth, | |
| Do call our country Father Land. | |
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| At first, in Eden’s bowers, they say, | |
| No sound of speech had Adam caught, | 10 |
| But whistled like a bird all day,— | |
| And maybe ’t was for want of thought: | |
| But Nature, with resistless laws, | |
| Made Adam soon surpass the birds; | |
| She gave him lovely Eve because | 15 |
| If he ’d a wife they must have words. | |
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| And so the native land, I hold, | |
| By male descent is proudly mine; | |
| The language, as the tale hath told, | |
| Was given in the female line. | 20 |
| And thus we see on either hand | |
| We name our blessings whence they ’ve sprung; | |
| We call our country Father Land, | |
| We call our language Mother Tongue. | |
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