For Home and Country "Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, This is the proud claim of Goldsmith's "Traveller," and the same passionate loyalty to the soil inspires all these poems of Fatherland. The Scotsman's heart is in the Highlands, the birthplace of valor, the country of worth; the English warrior boasts of his country: 66 And o'er one-sixth of all the earth, and over all the main, Like some good Fairy, Freedom marks and blesses her domain;" the Irish Minstrel-boy tears the chords of his faithful harp asunder lest they sound in the service of the foe, while the quick, alarming Yankee drum in Bret Harte's "Reveille" calls upon each freeman to defend the land of the pilgrim's pride, land where his fathers died. Religion, war, and glory were the three souls of a perfect Christian knight, says Lamartine, and if Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, summon us to the field, “Our business is like men to fight And hero-like to die. In Kipling's " Recessional" and Lowell's " Fatherland' we hear a note as valiant, but more spiritual. The one makes us remember that "The tumult and the shouting dies- An humble and a contrite heart." The other leads us to still higher levels of thought, reminding us that wherever a single soul doth pine, or one man may help another, that spot of earth is thine and mine-that is the world-wide fatherland. X FOR HOME AND COUNTRY The First, Best Country BUT where to find the happiest spot below, From "The Traveller." For Home and Country My Native Land Breathes there the man with soul so dead, "This is my own-my native land!" Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand? And, doubly dying, shall go down SIR WALTER SCOTT. From "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Loyalty Hame, hame, hame! oh hame I fain wad be, the tree, The lark shall sing me hame in my ain countrie; Hame, hame, hame! oh hame I fain wad be, The green leaf o' loyaltie's begun for to fa', An' green it will grow in my ain countrie. The great now are gane, wha attempted to save; But the sun thro' the mirk blinks blythe in my e'e, ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. For Home and Country My Heart's in the Highlands My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; |