  You ask me, why, though ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas? It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land where, girt with friends or foes, A man may speak the thing he will; A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent; Where faction seldom gathers head, But by degrees to fulness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time And individual freedom mute; Though Power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly great,— Though every channel of the state Should almost choke with golden sand,— Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth, Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky, And I will see before I die The palms and temples of the South. Alfred Tennyson. |
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