Interleaves
For Home and Country
“Such is the patriot’s boast, where’er we roam?
His first, best country ever is at home.”
This is the proud claim of Goldsmith’s “Traveller,” and the same passionate loyalty to the soil inspires all these poems of Fatherland. The Scotsman’s heart is in the Highlands, the birthplace of valor, the country of worth; the English warrior boasts of his country:
“And o’er one-sixth of all the earth, and over all the main,
Like some good Fairy, Freedom marks and blesses her domain;”
the Irish Minstrel-boy tears the chords of his faithful harp asunder lest they sound in the service of the foe, while the quick, alarming Yankee drum in Bret Harte’s “Reveille” calls upon each freeman to defend the land of the pilgrim’s pride, land where his fathers died.
Religion, war, and glory were the three souls of a perfect Christian knight, says Lamartine, and if Death’s couriers, Fame and Honor, summon us to the field,
“Our business is like men to fight
And hero-like to die.”
In Kipling’s “Recessional” and Lowell’s “Fatherland” we hear a note as valiant, but more spiritual. The one makes us remember that
“The tumult and the shouting dies—
The captains and the kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.”
The other leads us to still higher levels of thought, reminding us that wherever a single soul doth pine, or one man may help another, that spot of earth is thine and mine—that is the world-wide fatherland.