Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/152

140 ::Brave land! God has blest thee!
 * Thy strong heart I feel,
 * As I touch thee and test thee—
 * Dear land! As the steel

To the magnet flies upward, so rises thy breast, With a motherly pride to the touch of the test.

See! she smiles beneath the touchstone, looking on her distant youth, Looking down her line of leaders and of workers for the truth. Ere the Teuton, Norseman, Briton, left the primal woodland spring, When their rule was might and rapine, and their law a painted king; When the sun of art and learning still was in the Orient; When the pride of Babylonia under Cyrus' hand was shent;