Classic Poem

They whisper that you are dying,
Mother of mine and me:
Like a sick old eagle crying
Out of the northern sea:

But we answer, mother, O mother,
Back to thy breast we come,
We of thy breed and seed and none other
From the beat of the alien drum.

Loud was the new world song
That wooed and beckoned and won;
Long was the day, and long
The roads of water and sun;

But after the alien dream,
After the alien tongue; —
Sweet to creep to the true, to the old,
To the love that ever is young.