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The English soil! - 'tis hallowed ground:
Its restless children roam
The world, but they have never found
So dear a land as home;
Their passion for its hills and downs
Nor space nor time can spoil;...

Could I but strike - a sweeter note
Than all from virgin choirs that float,
Or harps with cords of gold;
A note more soft and more sublime
Than she, the sweetest of the Nine,
Euterpe's strains unfold!...

to -----.

E'en the fair orb on which I gaze
Suggests thy radiance by its rays:
That silvery, soft, and dreamy light,
So soft, and yet so beauteous bright,
Falling in glowing tints so faint, -...

I halted at the margin of the wood,
For tortuous was the path, and overhead
Low branches hung, and roots and fragments rude
Of rock hindered the tardy foot. I led
My timid horse, that started at our tread...

Come, Summer, come, nor in the south delay;
We do thee honor with a longer day;
We prize thee more, we better know thy worth;
We hold thee dearer in the truer north:
Come, Summer, come.
...

Know'st thou the land where the pious and bold
Beared Christianity's emblem of old,
And civilization's beneficent reign
Extended o'er anarchy's savage domain?
The land of the dauntless explorers who prest...

To some the heavenly Father good
Has given raiment rich and fine,
And tables spread with dainty food,
And jewels rare that brightly shine.

To some He's given gold that buys...

It's the Emerald Isle is the beautiful land:
There's nothing too good for the Irish.
O'er the whole of it, Nature, at heaven's command,
Has scattered her charms with a prodigal hand...

Oh! the sickening sensation!
Oh! the burning agitation
In my soul!
Oh! the awful desolation
Of my soul!
And my breast is sore with sighing.
Comfort to myself denying...

If gently falls the small, soft, lazy rain,
To indoor industries he shrewdly steals;
And in the barn from some neglected grain
The choking chaff the clattering fanner reels;...

The tree, with its leaves in luxuriance shading
My path in the tune-yielding time of the year,
Now sighs in its dirge, while its foliage, fading,
Descends to its sepulchre withered and sere.
...

(Translated from Homer.)

And when th'opposing ranks in conflict closed,
Shield rang on shield and rattled lance on lance,
And clashed the might of brazen mail'd men....

(From the French of Isidore Bedard.)

O soil Canadian, cherished earth,
The brave, the noble, peopled thee;
They left the country of their birth,
And sought a land of liberty....

Journeying through a desert, waste and drear,
Exhausted and disheartened by his way,
So hard and parched, unchanged from day to day,
Saw the lone traveller an oasis near,
In which a tender flower did appear,...

I was enveloped in black clouds of woe,
Woven o'er my vision by dark-veiled Despair;
I breathed the poison of the midnight air,
And 'neath its dank oppression wasted low....

Stay of the church and pillar of the state!
Who alway did'st to wrong thy voice oppose,
And strong hast striven corruption to expose,
And, jealous ever for thy country's fate,...

Divinely strong and beautiful in soul!
With more than melody of mortal voice!
The free thy spirit's majesty extol,
When Liberty is made thy Muse's choice.
And then how pure and pleasing is thy song,...

I cannot loiter on my way,
The ice is drifting through Belle Isle,
And far to seaward by Cape Ray
Broad leagues of open water smile.
Unheeded now, the inland barge
Creeps heavily, the fisher dips...

Loved by a host from Noah's days till now,
Extolled by bards in many a glowing line,
My purple rival of the mantling brow
May laugh to scorn this swarthy face of mine.
I care not: many a weary pain I cure;...

There is a valley where the wheat fields wave
In autumn like a gold ymolten sea;
There is a river whose cool waters lave
Sweet-scented gardens, groves, and rolling lea,
And homes of people worthy to be free;...