THE BRAVE old land of deed and song,
Of gentle hearts and spirits strong,
Of queenly maids and heroes grand,
Of equal laws,—our Fatherland!

Though born beneath a brighter sun,
Shall we forget the marvels done,
By soul outspoken, blood outpoured,
By bard and patriot, song and sword?

Forget how firm and true our sires,
Still lighted by their battle-fires,
’Gainst kingly power and kingly crime,
Long struggled in the darkened time?

How in a rolling sea they stood,

My father, who I hardly knew,
Was never one to shirk.
He died in nineteen twenty four,
While helping friends at work.

He came from Colorado,
Where the men were taught to ride.
He joined the Army Engineers,
And did the job with pride.

At first, he went to Texas,
Where he joined a border fight,
Controlling Pancho Villa;
And the Army did it right.

When more important war developed,
Far across the sea,
He went to France in World War One
To battle Germany.

When peace was won, he married young,

The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits
in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country."
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: "How
pleasant
To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she
scratched
Her cleft chin's solitary hair. She remembered spinach

And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach.
"M'love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out
in thunder
Today, and it shall be as you wish." He scratched

If I should die, to-day,
To-morrow, maybe, the world would see
Would waken from sleep, and say,
"Why here was talent! why here was worth!
Why here was a luminous light o' the earth.
A soul as free
As the winds of the sea:
To whom was given
A dower of heaven.
And fame, and name, and glory belongs
To this dead singer of living songs.
Bring hither a wreath, for the bride of death!"
And so they would praise me, and so they would raise me
Mayhap, a column, high over the bed
Where I should be lying, all cold and dead.

Do you remember that careless band,
Riding o'er meadow and wet sea-sand,
One autumn day, in a mist of sunshine,
Joyously seeking for fairyland?

The wind in the tree-tops was scarcely heard,
The streamlet repeated its one silver word,
And far away, o'er the depths of wood-land,
Floated the bell of the parson-bird.

Pale hoar-frost glittered in shady slips,
Where ferns were dipping their finger-tips,
From mossy branches a faint perfume
Breathed o'er honeyed Clematis lips.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
   Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
   Ding-dong.
   Hark! now I hear them--
   Ding-dong, bell!

This level reach of blue is not my sea;
Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,
Whose quiet ripples meet obediently
A marked and measured line, one after one.
This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves
Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.
I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

So let a love beat over me again,
Loosing its million desperate breakers wide;
Sudden and terrible to rise and wane;
Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide
That casts upon the heart, as it recedes,

The reivers they stole Fair Annie,
   As she walk'd by the sea;
But a noble knight was her ransom soon,
   Wi' gowd and white monie.

She bided in strangers' land wi' him,
   And none knew whence she cam;
She lived in the castle wi' her love,
   But never told her name.

'It 's narrow, narrow, mak your bed,
   And learn to lie your lane;
For I'm gaun owre the sea, Fair Annie,
   A braw Bride to bring hame.
Wi' her I will get gowd and gear,

FACING west, from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the
land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western Sea--the circle almost circled;
For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia--from the north--from the God, the sage, and the hero,
From the south--from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;
Long having wander'd since--round the earth having wander'd,

Between the mountain and the sea
I've made a happy landing;
And here a peace has come to me
That passeth understanding;
A shining faith and purity
Beyond demanding.
II
With palm below and pine above,
Where wings of gulls are gleaming;
By orange tree and olive grove,
From walls of airy seeming,
My roses beg me not to rove,
But linger dreaming.
III
So I'm in love with life again,
And would with joy dissever
My days from ways of worldly men,
And mingle with them never: