Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/45
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
33
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
"Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?"
Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around;
O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
"Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?"
Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around;
O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!
On Greenland's rocks, o'er grim Kamschatka's plains,
In pale Siberia's desolate domains;
When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The rein-deer's spoil, the ermine's treasure shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down head-long through the whirling main;
—His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,
In pale Siberia's desolate domains;
When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The rein-deer's spoil, the ermine's treasure shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down head-long through the whirling main;
—His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,