 | Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne |  |
XXIII.
ENGLAND.
Cloud-girded land, brave land beyond the sea!Land of my father's love! how oft I yearn
Toward thy famed ancestral shores to turn,
Roaming thy glorious realm in liberty;
All English growths would sacred seem to me,
From opulent oak to flickering wayside fern;
Much form her delicate daisies could I learn,
And all her home-bred flowers by lake or lea.
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Its grazing herds, and sweet hay-scented air;
An ancient hall near a slow rivulet's mouth;
A church vine-clad; a graveyard glooming south;
These are the scenes through which I fain would pass;
There lived my sires, whose sacred dust is there.
| Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne | |