Quotes
Quotes about Land
On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,--a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.
From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand.
The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.
A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast.
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While like the eagle free
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.
My native land, good night!
O Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.
Land of lost gods and godlike men.
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime;
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?
Strike--for your altars and your fires!
Strike--for the green graves of your sires!
God, and your native land!
They love their land because it is their own,
And scorn to give aught other reason why;
Would shake hands with a king upon his throne,
And think it kindness to his Majesty.
The stately homes of England,--
How beautiful they stand,
Amid their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land!
The self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne,
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
At the piping of all hands,
When the judgment-signal's spread--
When the islands and the lands
And the seas give up their dead,
And the South and North shall come;
When the sinner is dismayed,
And the just man is afraid,
Then Heaven be thy aid,
Poor Tom.
Hail to the land whereon we tread,
Our fondest boast!
The sepulchres of mighty dead,
The truest hearts that ever bled,
Who sleep on glory's brightest bed,
A fearless host:
No slave is here:--our unchained feet,
Walk freely as the waves that beat
Our coast.
Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,--imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,--"Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of--the air!"
Oh, I have roamed o'er many lands,
And many friends I've met;
Not one fair scene or kindly smile
Can this fond heart forget.
'T was Slander filled her mouth with lying words,
Slander, the foulest whelp of Sin.
The courage of New England was the "courage of Conscience." It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.
She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever,
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the flag of our Union forever!
England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.
The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning
Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled,
Till the slant sunbeams through the fringes raining
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
