Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/416

 400 JANE M. MEAD. [1S40-50. From sea to sea, from pole to pole, The stripes must Avave, the stars must burn, While mountains rise or rivers roll. To them the world's oppressed shall turn, To them the oppressor look with awe, And learn a tyrant's arm is clay, A tyrant's scepter but a straw ; And till the reign of Wrong gives way, Above our father's martyred dust, We swear: Our swords shall right the Just, Or ever in their scabbards rust ! OUR NATIVE LAND.* The home of our hearts — in a palace or cot, Be the climate serene, or all frigid the spot, — 'Mid Arno's green vales or the desert's hot sand — The sweetest of climes — is our dear Na- tive Land. Though never so rugged, and wint'ry, and wild, Who loves not the sod that he loved when a child ? Who loves not the wood where in boyhood he strayed — The green where he sported, the games that he played ? — The stream that rushed down from its home in the hill? The river that rolled by the clattering mill? The dam the lithe fishes o'erleaped in their play? The rocks shooting up through a tempest of spray? The sacred old homestead, all shorn of its pride, Where loved ones were bom and lamented ones died? The hay-mow, the garden, the orchard, the well. Whose cool-di'ipping waters chimed soft as they fell? What light gilds the wave where he tossed the first hook, To catch the bright minnows that glanced through the brook! His time-sobered pulses with boyhood re- thrill, Where shot his fleet sled down the snow- covered hill; AVhere, pausing at morn, on his pathway to school, He plied his new skates on the ice-coated pool, Or waded the drifts that were piled by the storm To print, on the snow-banks, his frolicsome form. ! mem'ry paints raptures, that manhood, in vain Would bai'ter the wealth of a world to re- gain. And clothes, with a halo of beauty and truth, The friends of his boyhood, the home of his youth ; Though life may have charms on a far, foreign shore, He sighs as he asks : " Shall I see them no more?" An alien, 'mid scenes the most lovely or grand, The heart has no home but its dear Na- tive Land.
 * Inscribed to a friend during his absence in Europe.