Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/74

52 To the far-flung fenceless prairie

Where the quick cloud-shadows trail,

To our neighbour's barn in the offing

And the line of the new-cut rail;

To the plough in her league-long furrow

With the gray Lake gulls behind—

To the weight of a half-year's winter

And the warm wet western wind!

To the home of the floods and thunder,

To her pale dry healing blue—

To the lift of the great Cape combers,

And the smell of the baked Karroo.

To the growl of the sluicing stamp-head—

To the reef and the water-gold,

To the last and the largest Empire,

To the map that is half unrolled!

To our dear dark foster-mothers,

To the heathen songs they sung—

To the heathen speech we babbled

Ere we came to the white man's tongue.