LINES
WRITTEN IN COMMONPLACE BOOK OF MISS BARBOUR, DAUGHTER
OF THE MINISTER OF THE U.S.A. TO ENGLAND
Child of my muse! in Barbour's gentle hand
Go cross the main: thou seek'st no foreign land:
'Tis not the clod beneath our feet we name
Our country. Each heaven-sanctioned tie the same,
Laws, manners, language, faith, ancestral blood,
Domestic honour, awe of womanhood:—
With kindling pride thou wilt rejoice to see
Britain with elbow-room and doubly free!
Go seek thy countrymen! and if one scar
Still linger of that fratricidal war,
Look to the maid who brings thee from afar;
Be thou the olive-leaf and she the dove,
And say, I greet thee with a brother's love!
S. T. Coleridge.
Grove, Highgate, August 1829.
