Father-Land and Mother-Tongue
OUR Father-land! And would’st thou know
Why we should call it Father-land?
It is, that Adam here below
Was made of earth by Nature’s hand;
And he, our father, made of earth,
Hath peopled earth on ev’ry hand,
And we, in memory of his birth,
Do call our country “Father-land.”
At first, in Eden’s bowers, they say,
No sound of speech had Adam caught,
But whistled like a bird all day,
And may be ’twas for want of thought.
But Nature, with resistless laws,
Made Adam soon surpass the birds;
She gave him lovely Eve, because,
If he’d a wife, they must have words.
And so, the native land, I hold,
By male descent is proudly mine;
The language, as the tale hath told,
Was given in the female line.
And thus, we see, on either hand,
We name our blessings whence they’ve sprung;
We call our country Father-land;
We call our language Mother-tongue.
Samuel Lover.