Elsie.
Would you not self assign your chief devotion
To God, your second to your native land?
Santa Anna.
That greatly will depend on what you call
Your native land. What is this Texas, speak!
A dreary waste, a desert territory
Of Mexico not worth the name of State,
With outlaws filled and refugees from justice,
The scum of the depraved society
Of the United States. And this you boast
Your native land, a penal colony?
Elsie.
Ah! must I hear Great Santa Anna's lips
Repeat the thoughtless sentiments of men
Who prejudiced, averse to deeper search,
Judge inward Nature only from without?
I will admit that many desperadoes.
Excreted elsewhere through society
And law from kind respect and intercourse.
Have found a welcome refuge and asylum
In sparsely-settled portions of our land,
On which their crimes bestow an ill repute.
But,—while beneath the prairies' atmosphere.
So pure, so temple-like, so God-pervaded,
And 'mong their dwellers' patriarchal spirit
