Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

KEARSARGE by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL

First Line: SUNDAY IN OLD ENGLAND
Last Line: LORDS OF THE LONELY DEEP.
Subject(s): AMERICAN CIVIL WAR; KEARSARGE (SHIP); SEA BATTLES; U.S. - HISTORY; NAVAL WARFARE;
SUNDAY in Old England:
In gray churches everywhere
The calm of low responses,
The sacred hush of prayer.

Sunday in Old England;
And summer winds that went
O'er the pleasant fields of Sussex,
The garden lands of Kent,

Stole into dim church windows
And passed the oaken door,
And fluttered open prayer-books
With the cannon's awful roar.

Sunday in New England:
Upon a mountain gray
The wind-bent pines are swaying
Like giants at their play;

Across the barren lowlands,
Where men find scanty food,
The north wind brings its vigor
To homesteads plain and rude.

Ho, land of pine and granite!
Ho, hardy northland breeze!
Well have you trained the manhood
That shook the Channel seas,

When o'er those storied waters
The iron war-bolts flew,
And through Old England's churches
The summer breezes blew;

While in our other England
Stirred one gaunt rocky steep,
When rode her sons as victors,
Lords of the lonely deep.



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