Oft as I paced the deck, My thought recurred on the uncertain sea To what is faster than the solid land. My Country! can the heart clasp realm so vast As the broad oceans that wash thee inclose? Is not the charity ambitious That meets its arms about a continent? And yet the sages praise the preference Of my own cabin to a baron's hall. Chide it not then, but count it honesty The insidious love & hate that curl the lip Of the frank Yankee in the tenements Of ducal & of royal rank abroad; His supercilious ignorance Of lordship, heraldry, & ceremony; Nor less, his too tenacious memory, Amid the particolored treasuries That deck the Louvre & the Pitti House, Of the brave steamboats puffing by New York, Boston's half-island, & the Hadley Farms Washed by Connecticut's psalm-loving stream. Yea, if the ruddy Englishman speak true, In Rome's basilica, and underneath The frescoed sky of its audacious dome, Dauntless Kentucky chews, & counts the cost, And builds the shrine with dollars in his head. Arrived in Italy, his first demand, -- 'Has the star-bearing squadron left Leghorn?' | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DEATH SNIPS PROUD MEN by CARL SANDBURG ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING by THOMAS HARDY CITY ROOFS by CHARLES HANSON TOWNE A CROWNED POET by ANNE REEVE ALDRICH A PUBLIC DANCE by JOHANNA AMBROSIUS EPIGRAM by FRANCOIS GUILLAUME JEAN STANISLAS ANDRIEUX ON THE VIRGINITY OF THE VIRGIN MARY AND JOHANNA SOUTHCOTT by WILLIAM BLAKE |