Poems (Ford)/Across the Sea

ACROSS THE SEA.

Across the sea is a fair green isle,
Where Nature weareth her sweetest smile,
Where giant mountains raise proudly high
Their hoary heads to the clouded sky,
Where fairy islets like emeralds sleep
In lakes of crystal, pure, calm and deep;
The dearest spot upon earth to me
Is that green island across the sea.

There grand old ruins rise sadly lone,
Footprints of ages of glory gone,
Ere foreign tyrants defiled the sod
Where countless altars were raised to God;
Ere discord severed the golden band
That wisdom twined round our happy land,—
Oh, to have seen thee when blest and free,
My own green island across the sea!

Oh, to have lived in those ages past
That yet a glory around thee cast,
When king and peasant knelt at one shrine,
And golden plenty and power were thine;

Ere war and famine, of foreign birth,
With martyrs' graves filled thy holy earth,
And forced thy children to fly from thee,
My own green island across the sea.

Though blood-stained ages of grief and gloom
Have strove to build thee a living tomb,
Still Freedom shouts from thy heroes' graves:
"Better die freemen than live as slaves!"
And brave hearts bound as they hear the words
That must be echoed with clash of swords,
And exiles sigh as they think of thee:
"God bless the green isle across the sea!"

Upon thy shore and in foreign lands
Brave hero-hearts, and strong, willing hands,
Wait but the moment to rise in might
For thee and Liberty, God and Right.
Thy night of sorrow is nearly past,
And Freedom's sun from the clouds at last
In dazzling splendor shall burst on thee,
My own green island across the sea.