Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/91

  I stood where lands and oceans meet, Gazing beyond the water’s foam. And though this were the Eden’s seat I could not rest away from home, Because I learned not to forget.

Keep passing westward at your pleasure, Men and clouds and birds of flight But for all your wealth and treasure Our poverty and plight This I never could forget.

I dearly love those rich moist meadow plains Covered in Spring with gay buttercups of gold; I love the winding brook with its waters cold, And all that grows and breathes and blooms again.

I love the lapwings, as through the grass they breeze, And the butterflies beneath the sun's carress, The aged willow in its newly fashioned dress, The woodpecker, as it drills the tan-barked trees.

I love to see the boys at Easter time Distributing gay colored Easter eggs The maiden, who serenely and sublime Asks of the brook: “What is it my lover begs?” Whereupon she leaps and picks a bloom in haste, And wades to her skirts across the golden waste.

The Battle’s lost, the ranks flee past recall Only three hundred heroes stand and fight. “Surrender now, but futile further spite!” Three hundred men still stand along the wall.

Regiments fore and aft and around them all Only beyond them, the blue tinged mountain forts Their native brownish huts with snow white courts! Not one of them would yield along the wall.

The muskets roared, men worked each pointed halberd, The aged oaks above them shook and fell Man after man fell dead along the rampart, Man after man kept standing in death’s Hell. The King escaped the coward saved his head. A Nation defeated lives proudly in her dead.