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The pride to rear an independent shed,
And give the lips we love unborrowed bread:
To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
To skirt our home, with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children's heritage, in prospect long.
These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong,
That beckon England's wanderers o'er the brine,
To realms where foreign constellations shine;
Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from th' Antarctic pole.
And what though doomed to shores so far apart
From England's home, that ev'n the homesick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recrossed,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost:
Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year's long sunshine roam,
That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.
And give the lips we love unborrowed bread:
To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
To skirt our home, with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children's heritage, in prospect long.
These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong,
That beckon England's wanderers o'er the brine,
To realms where foreign constellations shine;
Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from th' Antarctic pole.
And what though doomed to shores so far apart
From England's home, that ev'n the homesick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recrossed,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost:
Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year's long sunshine roam,
That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.
There, marking o'er his farm's expanding ring
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,
The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire's bound,
Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of acacian thorn,
While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove's and fig-tree's breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated soil;
And summing all the blessings God has given,
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,
The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire's bound,
Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of acacian thorn,
While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove's and fig-tree's breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated soil;
And summing all the blessings God has given,
