Classic Poem

One home together by the fells we knew
And the blue brakes of England in the spring,
And we had sires who also heard the bells
Somewhere along the English meadows. We
Measure one cause, one spirit, and one word,
And in one pilgrim faith have done our part
In the slow world's devising. Some queer grain
Of oak out of our soil moulded alike
The Mayflower , the Revenge . The East has dreams,
Lotus and temples and the circled fingers,
Building in contemplation. The sun returns
Yet to the South with Mediterranean song,
And Provence bears the old Athenian gift,
And still is heard the praise of troubadours,
Which is for service; from the Siberian fields
A sobbing and a moving in the night,
Where a great lineage communes with the earth,
Till grief is beauty and the wise revelation.
So from the races life inherits well,
Stillness, and flight, and faith. And we the West,
Whose tides from Kent to California move,
Shall we not be the new adventurers?
America, you were in Shakespeare's word,
And Milton's, half a prophecy. You were
An Ironside when Cromwell took the field,
Drake fared for you, and Nelson is your blood.
And England, little fens and pools and hills,
Green friendliness of pastures in the dusk,
White-thorn where thrushes nest, grey thatch and stone,
What excellence of you was there that day
When an unnoted sail put out to sea
From Plymouth to the England of a dream?
At Yorktown did your nobler heart lament
Among the lost or beat with Washington?
And has not Lincoln in your proper tongue
Your chronicle retold of Runnymede?
Then, pledged upon a happier covenant
Than furnished old crusades, with none to fear
Of arms or treasons, having for our faith
To covet not an acre of the world,
Shall we not be the new adventurers?
Come — let us get our gospel now by heart —
One man in grief sets a whole world in tears;
No man is free while one for freedom fears.