An American to Mother England

England! My England! can the surging seaThat lies between us tear my heart from thee?Can distant birth and distant dwelling drainTh’ ancestral blood that warms the loyal vein?Isle of my Fathers! hear the filial songOf him whose sources but to thee belong!World-Conquering Mother! by thy mighty handWas carv’d from savage wilds my native land:Thy matchless sons the firm foundation laid;Thy matchless arts the nascent nation made:By thy just laws the young republic grew,And through thy greatness, kindred greatness knew.What man that springs from thy untainted lineBut sees Columbia’s virtues all as thine?Whilst nameless multitudes upon our shoreFrom the dim corners of creation pour,Whilst mongrel slaves crawl hither to partakeOf Saxon liberty they could not make,From such an alien crew in grief I turn,And for the mother’s voice of Britain burn.England! can aught remove the cherish’d chainThat binds my spirit to thy blest domain?Can Revolution’s bitter precepts swayThe soul that must the ties of race obey?Create a new Columbia if ye will,The flesh that forms me is Britannic still!Hail! oaken shades, and meads of dewy green,So oft in sleep, yet ne’er in waking seen.Peal out, ye ancient chimes, from vine-clad towerWhere pray’d my fathers in a vanish’d hour:What countless years of rev’rence can ye claimFrom bygone worshippers that bore my name!Their forms are crumbling in the vaults around,Whilst I, across the sea, but dream the sound.Return, Sweet Vision! Let me glimpse againThe stone-built abbey, rising o’er the plain;The neighb’ring village with its sun-shower’d square;The shaded mill-stream, and the forest fair,The hedge-lin’d lane, that leads to rustic cotWhere sweet contentment is the peasant’s lot:The mystic grove, by Druid wraiths possess’d,The flow’ring fields, with fairy-castles blest:And the old manor-house, sedate and dark,Set in the shadows of the wooded park.Can this be dreaming? Must my eyelids closeThat I may catch the fragrance of the rose?Is it in fancy that the midnight valeThrills with the warblings of the nightingale?A golden moon bewitching radiance yields,And England’s fairies trip o’er England’s fields.England! Old England! in my love for theeNo dream is mine, but blessed memory;Such haunting images and hidden firesCourse with the bounding blood of British sires:From British bodies, minds, and souls I come,And from them draw the vision of their home.Awake, Columbia! scorn the vulgar ageThat bids thee slight thy lordly heritage.Let not the wide Atlantic’s wildest waveBurst the blest bonds that fav’ring Nature gave:Connecting surges ‘twixt the nations run,Our Saxon souls dissolving into one!