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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341434" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>On Returning To England</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">There! once again I stand on home,<br>Though round me still there swirls the foam,<br>Leaping athwart the vessel's track<br>To bid a wanderer welcome back,<br>And though as yet through softening haze<br>White cliffs but vaguely greet my gaze.<br>For, England! yours the waves, the spray,<br>And, be one's foothold what it may,<br>Wherever billow wafts or wends,<br>Your soil is trodden, your shore extends.<br>How stern! how sweet! Though fresh from lands<br>Where soft seas heave on slumbering strands,<br>And zephyrs moistened by the south<br>Seem kisses from an infant's mouth,<br>My northern blood exults to face<br>The rapture of this rough embrace,<br>Glowing in every vein to feel<br>The cordial caress of steel<br>From spear-blue air and sword-blue sea,<br>The armour of your liberty.<br>Braced by the manly air, I reach<br>My soul out to the approaching beach,<br>And own, the instant I arrive,<br>The dignity of being alive!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now with forward-faring feet<br>Eager I leap to land, and greet<br>The hearty grasp, the honest gaze,<br>The voice that means the thing it says,<br>The gait of men by birthright free,<br>Unceremonial courtesy.<br>None frown, none cringe, but, fearless-eyed,<br>Are kindly all; since, side by side,<br>Authority and Freedom reign<br>In twin equality, and drain<br>Their sanction from the self-same breast,<br>And Law is wise Will manifest.<br>Yes, this is England, frank and fair:<br>I tread its turf, I breathe its air,<br>And catch from every stalwart lung<br>The music of my mother tongue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And who are these that cluster round<br>With hastening feet and silvery sound,<br>And eyes as liquid as the dawn,<br>When laughs the dew on Kentish lawn?<br>These England's daughters, frank yet arch,<br>Supple as April, strong as March:<br>Like pink-white windflowers in the grove,<br>That came while east and west wind strove<br>For mastery, and Spring seemed late,<br>Hardy alike and delicate.<br>How well their faces fit the scene,<br>The copses gray, the hedgerows green,<br>The white-veiled blackthorn, gorse afire,<br>The cottage yew, the village spire;<br>The pastures flecked with frisking lambs<br>Around their gravely grazing dams;<br>The children loitering home from school,<br>Their hands and pinafores all full<br>Of cuckoo-pint and bluebell spike,<br>Gathered in dingle, dell, and dyke;<br>The comely homes one just can see<br>Through flowering belts of bush and tree,<br>That all combine, all, all conspire,<br>To more than satisfy desire,<br>To make one love this lovely earth,<br>And bless Heaven for one's British birth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bewitching climes! where late I sought<br>In change of scene a change of thought,<br>Refreshment from familiar ground,<br>And, what I sought for, more than found,<br>Where old enchantment haunteth still<br>Ligurian coast and Tuscan hill,<br>Climes I have ventured oft and long<br>To celebrate in faltering song,<br>Where fearless almond, faery larch,<br>Smiling, disarm the frown of March,<br>Snow hath no terrors, frost no sting,<br>And playful Winter mimics Spring,<br>Deem me not thankless, nor deny<br>Fresh welcome from your shore and sky,<br>Repose from thought so oft implored,<br>And ne'er refused, if, now restored<br>By you to health, by you to home,<br>Glad I return, late glad to roam.<br>For dear to me though wayside shrine<br>By silent gorge or murmuring brine;<br>Dear though the barefoot peasant folk<br>Who lop the vine and steer the yoke<br>Of soft-eyed, sleek-skinned, creamy beeves,<br>Up narrow ways to broad slant eaves;<br>The stony mule-tracks twisting slow<br>Up slopes where cherry-blossoms blow<br>'Mid olive gray and ilex brown,<br>On to some sun-bronzed mountain town;<br>The hush and cool of marble domes,<br>Where, wed to reverie, one roams<br>Through transept, chancel, cloister, cell,<br>Where still with far-off faces dwell<br>Sages and saints devoutly limned<br>By hands long dust and eyes long dimmed;<br>Dear though all these, and ne'er forgot,<br>No southern shore, no sunniest spot,<br>Not Roccabruna's hamlet crest,<br>Not Eza's brow, not Taggia's breast,<br>Not Bellosguardo's sunset hour,<br>Not Dante's seat nor Giotto's Tower,<br>Nor even Spiaggiascura's foam,<br>Moisten and melt my heart like home.<br>For here the cuckoo seems more glad,<br>The nightingale more sweetly sad,<br>Primroses more akin in gaze<br>To childlike wonder, childlike ways;<br>And all things that one sees and hears,<br>Since rooted in the bygone years,<br>And blending with their warm caress<br>A touch of homely tenderness,<br>Bid the quick instinct in one's blood<br>Pay tribute unto motherhood.<br>How should strange lands, it boots not where,<br>Divorce one from one's native air,<br>Or in a loyal breast dethrone<br>Unreasoning reverence for one's own?<br>Yet love and reason surely blend<br>To stir this passion and commend?<br>And who will blame if, though one seeks<br>In gentler tides, and sterner peaks<br>That tower above a wider plain,<br>Contrast to northern hill and main,<br>I cherish still and hold apart<br>The fondest feeling in my heart<br>For where, beneath one's parent sky,<br>Our dear ones live, our dead ones lie?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you, dear friend, who linger still<br>Beside the iris-crested rill<br>That silvers through your olives gray<br>From convent-capped Fiesole,<br>Think not that I forget, forswear,<br>The scenes we lately vowed so fair.<br>To these your wandering footsteps bring<br>The freshness of an English Spring;<br>And even Florence sunnier glows,<br>When Phyllis prattles and Ivor crows.<br>And, though among them still you stray,<br>Sweet-lengthening-out a Tuscan May,<br>You too will here return before<br>Our Northern roses blow once more,<br>To prove to all of kindred birth,<br>For winsome grace and sterling worth,<br>Nothing can match, where'er we roam,<br>An English wife in English home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Austin">Alfred Austin</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341434" data-title="On Returning To England de Alfred Austin" data-description="There! once again I stand on home,
Though round me still there swirls the foam,
Leaping athwart the vessel's track
To bid a wanderer welcome back,
And though as yet through softening haze
White cliffs but vaguely greet my gaze.
For, England! yours..."></div>
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