Poems (Ford)/My Native Land

MY NATIVE LAND.

I love thee, oh, my native land!
Love is a word too weak
The boundless worship to express
That words but faintly speak;
Thou art an idol at whose shrine
My soul must bend the knee;
Life were but death without the hope
Of brighter days for thee.

Thou'rt beautiful, my native land!
Up from thy flowery sod
Fair Nature lifts a smiling face
To meet the smile of God;
Thy giant mountains robed in blue,
Thy vales in deathless green,
Bathed in thy tears are fairer still,
Our beauteous captive queen.

Oh, land of hero, saint and sage,
So sad and yet so fair,
Thy limbs are bound with heavy chains,
Thy heart is crushed with care;
And yet, the more thou'rt made to groan
Beneath the tyrant's hand,
The stronger grows my love for thee,
My worshipped native land.

Although thy bitter wrongs increase
With every passing year,
Thy sorrows to thy children's hearts
But make thee still more dear;
Though forced far from thy shore to stray,
On many a distant strand,
From every heart the prayer leaps out:
"God bless the old Green Land!"

Oh, land of beauty, land of song,
God's blessing on thee rest;
May Freedom's sun soon light thy shore,
Fair Island of the West;
Soon 'midst the nations of the earth
May'st thou a nation stand,
With chainless limbs and laureled brow,
My land—my native land.