America
I love thine inland seas,
Thy groves of giant trees,
Thy rolling plains;
Thy rivers' mighty sweep,
Thy mystic canyons deep,
Thy mountains wild and steep,
All thy domains;
Thy silver Eastern strands,
Thy Golden Gate that stands
Wide to the West;
Thy flowery Southland fair,
Thy sweet and crystal air, --
O land beyond compare,
Thee I love best!
Additional verses for the
National Hymn,
March, 1906.
poem by Henry Van Dyke
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Related quotes
O Southland!
O Southland! O Southland!
Have you not heard the call,
The trumpet blown, the word made known
To the nations, one and all?
The watchword, the hope-word,
Salvation's present plan?
A gospel new, for all-for you
Man shall be saved by man.
O Southland! O Southland!
Do you not hear to-day
The mighty beat of onward feet,
And know you not their way?
'Tis forward, 'tis upward,
On to the fair white arch
Of Freedom's dome, and there is room
For each man who would march.
O Southland, fair Southland!
Then why do you still cling
To an idle age and a musty page,
To a dead and useless thing?
'Tis springtime! 'Tis work-time!
The world is young again!
And God's above, and God is love,
And men are only men.
O Southland! my Southland!
O birthland! do not shirk
The toilsome task, nor respite ask,
But gird you for the work.
Remember, remember
That weakness stalks in pride;
That he is strong who helps along
The faint one at his side.
poem by James Weldon Johnson
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Mountains, Canyons, and Rivers
Mountains, canyons, and rivers.
In the material and abstract they're nature.
We never were receivers, nor givers.
We were never indecisive, nor were we sure.
Mountains, tall and grand,
Might one see it as an obstacle?
On the other side lies a land,
In abstract and material, is much like a miracle.
Canyons, deep and daunting,
Might one see it as a rift?
Separated from one so loved, you stand staring.
Stand upright from where you lie; I'll give you a lift.
Rivers, soothing in a mellifluous flow,
Might one see it as their life?
By dawn and dusk you row,
Through a flow devoid of strife.
Mountains, canyons, and rivers.
We've seen them as ourselves.
And through realization in form of shivers,
We see sentience in us that delves.
poem by Leonardo David Tay
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The Moon's Minion
Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear,
The wand'ring waters, green and grey;
Thine eyes are wonderful and clear,
And deep, and deadly, even as they;
The spirit of the changeful sea
Informs thine eyes at night and noon,
She sways the tides, and the heart of thee,
The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!
The Moon came down the shining stair
Of clouds that fleck the summer sky,
She kissed thee, saying, 'Child, be fair,
And madden men's hearts, even as I;
Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet,
That know me and are known of me;
The lover thou shalt never meet,
The land where thou shalt never be!'
She held thee in her chill embrace,
She kissed thee with cold lips divine,
She left her pallor on thy face,
That mystic ivory face of thine;
And now I sit beside thy feet,
And all my heart is far from thee,
Dreaming of her I shall not meet,
And of the land I shall not see!
poem by Andrew Lang
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Crossroads
When first I did appear upon this native soil
All up and down this country at labor I did toil
I slumbered in the moonlight and I rose with the sun
I rambled through the canyons where the cold rivers run
When first I did come down where the land meets the sea
The people said who are you and what would your name be
I said I have no home and I am no mans son
twas inland I was born and from inland that I come
In the good land I was young and I was strong
No one dared to call me son
Happy just to see my days work done
See my days work done
So I swung an axe as a timberjack
And I worked the Quebec mines
And on the golden prairie I rode the big combines
I sailed the maritime waters of many a seaport town
Built the highways and the byways to the western salmon grounds
Ive gazed upon the good times Ive seen the bad times too
Felt many a cold and bitter wind and many a mornin dew
Ive watched the country growin like a fair and mighty thing
And on the still of a summer night Ive heard the mountains ring
In the good land I was young and I was strong
No one dared to call me son
Happy just to see my days work done
See my days work done
But now the seeds are planted and the gates are open wide
The old ways are forgotten theres no place left to hide
And the legacy Im leavin you is not very hard to find
Youll see it all around you at this crossroads of time
In the sweet soil its a-growin at the crossroads of time
song performed by by Gordon Lightfoot
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Wild Is Love
(dorothy wayne, ray rauch)
(chorus sings:)
Wild is love!
Wild is love!
Wild-wild-wild
Is love!
(nats spoken words:)
As a rule, mans a fool.
When its hot, he wants it cool.
When its cool, he wants it hot.
Always wanting
What is not.
(nat sings:)
Wild is love
Whenever two hearts meet,
Wild is love,
Bitter, but oh so sweet.
And I know
I must go
Wherever love takes me,
Whatever love makes me,
I will be!
Like a fire
Burning beyond control,
Wild is love
Deep in my heart and soul
And though wild as the wind
And wild as the rolling sea,
Nothing could ever be
As wild as love.
~interlude~
And I know
I must go
Wherever love takes me,
Whatever love makes me,
I will be!
~interlude~
And though wild is the wind
And wild is the rolling sea,
Nothing could ever be
As wild as love...
As wild as love...
As wild as love...
As wild is love!
song performed by by Nat King Cole
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sonnet To Italy
FOR thee, Ansonia! Nature's bounteous hand,
Luxuriant spreads around her blooming stores;
Profusion laughs o'er all the glowing land,
And softest breezes from thy myrtle-shores.
Yet though for thee, unclouded suns diffuse
Their genial radiance o'er thy blushing plains;
Though in thy fragrant groves the sportive muse
Delights to pour her wild, enchanted strains;
Though airs that breathe of paradise are thine,
Sweet as the Indian, or Arabian gales;
Though fruitful olive and empurpling vine,
Enrich, fair Italy! thy Alpine vales;
Yet far from thee inspiring freedom flies,
To Albion's coast and ever-varying skies!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Sonnet To Italy
FOR thee, Ansonia! Nature's bounteous hand,
Luxuriant spreads around her blooming stores;
Profusion laughs o'er all the glowing land,
And softest breezes from thy myrtle-shores.
Yet though for thee, unclouded suns diffuse
Their genial radiance o'er thy blushing plains;
Though in thy fragrant groves the sportive muse
Delights to pour her wild, enchanted strains;
Though airs that breathe of paradise are thine,
Sweet as the Indian, or Arabian gales;
Though fruitful olive and empurpling vine,
Enrich, fair Italy! thy Alpine vales;
Yet far from thee inspiring freedom flies,
To Albion's coast and ever-varying skies!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Today... 'A Cluster of Henna Blossoms
A cluster of Henna and Camphire is He
The Son of God Who came down to earth for me.
No greater love has any man ever known
Than the love that Jesus for me has shown.
With fragrance so sweet and blossom so fair
None to my Belovèd can ever compare.
For the One that descended down from heaven
stands unique amongst the races of men.
(see also the additional information in the Poet's notes box)
Take Her
As she danced about the sun,
She whitened the green plains under her;
As she moved about the moon,
She whitened the red valley below her;
But, in the light of her golden wings i do rest my case.
With a gentle motion in heaven's blue smile,
Over the lakes and the plains with her sweet love;
But in the depths of the purple sea,
The stars peeped behind her and peered.
She is very far away but,
Her love and rest ardour me;
And the diamond lights up her secret mine like,
The dark plains below her;
Which is found in an old region when looking for her.
The pearl gleams forth from her coral strand,
Like the wealth of the seas;
Over her sands of gold i do respect.
Not there my child,
Over here to see the fearless eyes of love;
Like the lit by her deep love's truth.
Her love is like the flowers of the bees,
Remembering the day when she first came;
Take her as your wife and make love to her.
Take her like the sages of Egypt,
Take her like the wealth of the seas,
The very lit by her deep love's truth;
Study her dance and be in love.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Grace Of Clydeside
AH, little Grace of the golden locks,
The hills rise fair on the shores of Clyde.
As the merry waves wear out these rocks
She wears my heart out, glides past and mocks:
But heaven's gate ever stands open wide.
The boat goes softly along, along,
Like a river of life glows the amber Clyde;
Her voice floats near me like angel's song,--
Ah, sweet love-death, but thy pangs are strong!
Though heaven's gate ever stands open wide.
We walk by the shore and the stars shine bright,
But coldly, above the solemn Clyde:
Her arm touches mine--her laugh rings light--
ONE hears my silence: His merciful night
Hides me--Can heaven be open wide?
I ever was but a dreamer, Grace:
As the gray hills watch o'er the sunny Clyde,
Standing afar, each in his place,
I watch your young life's beautiful race,
Apart--until heaven be opened wide.
And sometimes when in the twilight balm
The hills grow purple along the Clyde,
The waves flow softly and very calm,
I hear all nature sing this one psalm,
That 'heaven's gate ever stands open wide.'
So, happy Grace, with your spirit free,
Laugh on! life is sweet on the banks of Clyde;
This is no blame unto thee or me;
Only God saw it could not be,
Therefore His heaven stands open wide.
poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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I Do Not Love Thee For That Fair
I do not love thee for that fair
Rich fan of thy most curious hair;
Though the wires thereof be drawn
Finer than threads of lawn,
And are softer than the leaves
On which the subtle spider weaves.
I do not love thee for those flowers
Growing on thy cheeks, love's bowers;
Though such cunning them hath spread,
None can paint them white and red:
Love's golden arrows thence are shot,
Yet for them I love thee not.
I do not love thee for those soft
Red coral lips I've kissed so oft,
Nor teeth of pearl, the double guard
To speech whence music still is heard;
Though from those lips a kiss being taken
Mighty tyrants melt, and death awaken.
I do not love thee, O my fairest,
For that richest, for that rarest
Silver pillar, which stands under
Thy sound head, that globe of wonder;
Though that neck be whiter far
Than towers of polished ivory are.
poem by Thomas Carew
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The Other World page one
THE—OTHER—WORLD-UNSPOILT page-one
The next dimension,
The invisible place,
The home of spirits,
A place of untouched beauty,
That place is here,
Not up there,
Mountains high,
Decorated with snow,
Rivers wild and free,
Crystal clear,
Cascading,
Roaring,
Thundering,
Plunging
White swirling water,
Foaming,
A long river banks,
Trees giants have grown,
Reaching up and up,
Touching clouds,
Disappearing into a silver mist,
Over the land they span,
Like a giant fan,
Swaying in harmonic rhyme,
Cohorts by the breeze,
They shade,
They cover
They become homes,
For birds,
All sorts of furry creatures,
I see valleys
Where silver ribbons flow,
And Technicolor,
Glows,
Rainbows,
Double and double,
Magnificent,
Magnified,
Magnetism,
poem by Osceola Waters
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Behold, My Love, How Green the Groves
Behold, my love, how green the groves,
The primrose banks how fair;
The balmy gales awake the flowers,
And wave thy flowing hair.
The lav’rock shuns the palace gay,
And o’er the cottage sings:
For Nature smiles as sweet, I ween,
To Shepherds as to Kings.
Let minstrels sweep the skilfu’ string,
In lordly lighted ha’:
The Shepherd stops his simple reed,
Blythe in the birken shaw.
The Princely revel may survey
Our rustic dance wi’ scorn;
But are their hearts as light as ours,
Beneath the milk-white thorn!
The shepherd, in the flowery glen;
In shepherd’s phrase, will woo:
The courtier tells a finer tale,
But is his heart as true!
These wild-wood flowers I’ve pu’d, to deck
That spotless breast o’ thine:
The courtiers’ gems may witness love,
But, ’tis na love like mine.
poem by Robert Burns
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Westward on the High-Hilled Plains
Westward on the high-hilled plains
Where for me the world began,
Still, I think, in newer veins
Frets the changeless blood of man.
Now that other lads than I
Strip to bathe on Severn shore,
They, no help, for all they try,
Tread the mill I trod before.
There, when hueless is the west
And the darkness hushes wide,
Where the lad lies down to rest
Stands the troubled dream beside.
There, on thoughts that once were mine,
Day looks down the eastern steep,
And the youth at morning shine
Makes the vow he will not keep.
poem by Alfred Edward Housman
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My Heart's Treasure
Love swells like the ocean,
But it ebbs like its tide;
With a smile on her lips i look forward,
Like Romeo and Juliet.
One touch to her hand and,
One word in her ear;
So faithful in love to swing her muse.
Oh my heart's treasure!
You are all that i have;
Like the fair breeze that blows around.
Oh my heart's treasure!
Of a river steep and wide;
Day after day,
Night after night,
Into the silent sea of love.
The fair breeze blew,
The white foam of love flew,
Like something sweet from my lover's breasts.
You are my beloved from Pole to Pole,
You are my beloved from North to South,
You are my beloved from East to West,
From the very deep blue sea to play;
Like a soft floating witchery of sound.
Of one word in her ear,
Lovely dropping like flowers;
Of the animated nature of sweet love to share,
Like diamonds which are forever! !
Half closed eyelids,
The frost of the midnight spells our names;
So save that which was on your side.
Of the thin blue flames,
Inaudible as dreams;
She's my heart honoured maid,
Like the bubbles that glitter.
To the extreme silentness of her love,
Like a toy of thoughts gone by;
At school she was first but, at love she was last.
Of my sweet birth place with unclosed lids,
But this love is with wild pleasure!
With articulated sounds of things to come.
Sweetly is this love like,
The poor man's only music;
In this dep calm,
In this love so sweet,
Like the golden exhalations of the dawn.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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The Evening Wind
Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow:
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!
Nor I alone--a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!
Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.
The faint old man shall lean his silver head
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moistened curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep:
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.
Go--but the circle of eternal change,
Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.
poem by William Cullen Bryant
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Autumn Woods
Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.
The mountains that infold,
In their wide sweep, the coloured landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.
I roam the woods that crown
The upland, where the mingled splendours glow,
Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below.
My steps are not alone
In these bright walks; the sweet south-west, at play,
Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown
Along the winding way.
And far in heaven, the while,
The sun, that sends that gale to wander here,
Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,--
The sweetest of the year.
Where now the solemn shade,
Verdure and gloom where many branches meet;
So grateful, when the noon of summer made
The valleys sick with heat?
Let in through all the trees
Come the strange rays; the forest depths are bright?
Their sunny-coloured foliage, in the breeze,
Twinkles, like beams of light.
The rivulet, late unseen,
Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run,
Shines with the image of its golden screen,
And glimmerings of the sun.
But 'neath yon crimson tree,
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.
Oh, Autumn! why so soon
Depart the hues that make thy forests glad;
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,
And leave thee wild and sad!
Ah! 'twere a lot too blessed
For ever in thy coloured shades to stray;
Amid the kisses of the soft south-west
To rove and dream for aye;
And leave the vain low strife
That makes men mad--the tug for wealth and power,
The passions and the cares that wither life,
And waste its little hour.
poem by William Cullen Bryant
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The Quest
I sought Him on the purple seas,
I sought Him on the peaks aflame;
Amid the gloom of giant trees
And canyons lone I called His name;
The wasted ways of earth I trod:
In vain! In vain! I found not God.
I sought Him in the hives of men,
The cities grand, the hamlets gray,
The temples old beyond my ken,
The tabernacles of to-day;
All life that is, from cloud to clod
I sought. . . . Alas! I found not God.
Then after roamings far and wide,
In streets and seas and deserts wild,
I came to stand at last beside
The death-bed of my little child.
Lo! as I bent beneath the rod
I raised my eyes . . . and there was God.
poem by Robert William Service
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Steep
Much ado is all I see
(although my roots were deep)
In fact it is surrounding me
The seething crowd intrudes all day
(I sank in hillsides deep)
Until Im finally swept away
Although I thought my roots were deep
(the rivers that erode)
I sank them into hillsides steep
And riverbanks that soon erode
(and canyons overflow)
And canyons that have overflowed
song performed by by Phish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Bergen
As thou sittest there
Skerry-bound and fair,
Mountains high around and ocean's deep before thee,
On thee casts her spell
Saga
, that shall tell
Once again the wonders of our land.
Honor is thy due,
'Bergen never new,'
Ancient and unaging as thy Holberg's humor;
Once kings sought thine aid,-
Mighty now in trade,-
First to fly the flag of liberty.
Oft in proud array,
As a sunshine-day
Breaks forth from thy rain and fog wind-driven,
Thou didst come with men
Or great deeds again,
When the clouds were darkest o'er our land.
Thy soul was the ground,
Wit-enriched and sound,
Whence there sprang stout thoughts to make our country's harvest,
Whence our arts exist,
In their birth-hour kissed
By thy nature, somber, large, and strong.
In thy mountain-hall
Learned our painter,
Dahl
;
Wand'ring on thy strands our poet dreamed,
Welhaven
;
All thy morning's gold
Ole Bull
ensouled,
Greeted on thy bay by all the world.
With thy sea-wide sway
Thou hast might for aye,
Fjords of blue convey thy life-blood through our country.
Norway's spirit thou
Dost with joy endow,-
Great thy past, no less thy future great.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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