Classic Poem

Two streams have issued from thy wat'ry breast,
Two famous bands have sallied from thy nest;
One strove for home, one ventured to the west,
The Pilgrim Fathers and the Ironsides.
One filled Old England with undying fame,
Their leader, tempered steel, their hearts aflame,
The other raised immortally thy name;
Throughout a hemisphere thy seed abides.

Unique thou standest lifted from the wave
Where Roman, Dutch, and English joined to save;
And step by step to fight that heaving grave —
The hungry sea,
That beats untiring at thy outer gate,
That roars and rages with undying hate,
And threatens, shouldst thou falter, with the fate
Of Zuyder Zee.

Thy deathless songster, Tennyson, did raise
His silvern voice to trumpet forth thy praise;
Thy homely virtues, graven in his lays,
Still brightly glow.
These bear thy fame aloft the ages through:
Brave Hereward and saintly Bishop Hugh,
Grave Burleigh and intrepid Franklin, too,
Sir Isaac Newton and Jean Ingelow.

Horncastle, Partney, Stow, thine ancient marts
Are fading to decay;
Deep in our hearts
Those sacred spires our fathers raised on high —
Lincoln, Boston, and Grantham hold the sky;
Old abbeys whispering of the ages past —
Swineshead, Kirkstead, Bardney, and, last,
Viewed from afar, beneath low evening skies,
Thy towers, Tattershall, we ever prize.
We love thee, Lincolnshire, our mother, thou;
We worship thee, whilst following the plough,
We need no cities' fame nor glittering strand,
Nor wealth seek we;
Only thy level Fen and gentle Wolds,
Our fathers' graves thy memory enfolds,
For life and death our fate thy bosom holds;
Content with thee,
Who hold'st us in the hollow of one hand,
The other barring with an iron band
The eternal sea.