Hail to the land whereon we tread,
Our fondest boast!
The sepulchre of mighty dead,
The truest hearts that ever bled,
Who sleep on glory’s brightest bed,
A fearless host:
No slave is here;—our unchained feet
Walk freely, as the waves that beat
Our coast.
Our fathers crossed the ocean’s wave
To...
Clime of the brave! the high heart’s home,
Laved by the wild and stormy sea!
Thy children, in this far-off land,
Devote to-day their hearts to thee;
Our thoughts, despite of space and time,
To-day are in our native clime,
Where passed our sinless years, and where
Our infant heads first bowed in prayer.
Stern land! we love...
New england’s dead! New England’s dead!
On every hill they lie;
On every field of strife, made red
By bloody victory.
Each valley, where the battle poured
Its red and awful tide,
Beheld the brave New England sword
With slaughter deeply dyed.
Their bones are on the northern hill,
And on the southern...
Keats
o gold Hyperion, love-lorn Porphyro,
Ill-fated! from thine orbëd fire struck back
Just as the parting clouds began to glow,
And stars, like sparks, to bicker in thy track!
Alas! throw down, throw down, ye mighty dead,
The leaves of oak and asphodel
That ye were weaving for that honored head,—
In vain, in vain, your...
Lear and Cordelia! ’t was an ancient tale
Before thy Shakespeare gave it deathless fame:
The times have changed, the moral is the same.
So like an outcast, dowerless, and pale,
Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale
Spread her young banner, till its sway became
A wonder to the nations. Days of shame
Are close upon thee: prophets raise...
The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green
Above the spent heart, the Olympian head,
The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen,
Unseeing, the locked lips whose song hath fled;
Yet mystic-lived, like some rich, tropic flower,
His fame puts forth fresh blossoms hour by hour;
Wide spread the laden branches dropping dew
On the low,...
Thou art as a lone watcher on a rock,
With Saxon hair back floating in the wind,
Gazing where stranger ships, to doom consigned,
Upon the sullen ledges grind and knock.
Fair were the barks round which the breakers flock,
Rich freights had they of treasure for mankind,
And gallant were the hearts that left behind
The sea’s broad buffet for...
Now england lessens on my sight;
The bastioned front of Wales,
Discolored and indefinite,
There like a cloud-wreath sails:
A league, and all those thronging hills
Must sink beneath the sea;
But while one touch of Memory thrills,
They yet shall stay with me.
I claim no birthright in yon sod,
Though thence my...
I
there was a rover from a western shore,
England! whose eyes the sudden tears did drown,
Beholding the white cliff and sunny down
Of thy good realm, beyond the sea’s uproar.
I, for a moment, dreamed that, long before,
I had beheld them thus, when, with the frown
Of sovereignty, the victor’s palm and crown
Thou from the tilting-...
Mother of nations, of them eldest we,
Well is it found, and happy for the state,
When that which makes men proud first makest them great,
And such our fortune is who sprang from thee,
And brought to this new land from over sea
The faith that can with every household mate,
And freedom whereof law is magistrate,
And thoughts that make men...
