from The Bijou Literary Annual, 1828
author: By Delta
source date: 1828
edition published: 20170606
availability: Freely available via a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

The Bijou;
or Annual of Literature and the Arts

compiled by William Fraser
William Pickering London
1828
pp. 318-319

Our Native Land

By Delta

Our Native Land [[Note to "Our Native Land":] A poem identical to this one appears in the 1852 Poetical Works by David Macbeth Moir . [Poetess Archive Editor.]]

Moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos.

The halo round the Seraph's head
Too purified for thing of Earth,
Is not more beautifully bright
Than that celestial zone oflight,
Which Nature's magic hand haath shed
Around the land which gave us birth.

Oh! — be that country beautified
With woods that wave, and streams that glide,
Where bounteous air and earth unfold
The gales of health, and crops of gold;
Let flowers and fields be ever fair;
Let fragrance load the languid air;
Be vines in every valley there;
And olives on each mountain side; —
Or — let it be a wilderness
Where heaven and earth oppose in gloom;
Where the low sun all faintly glows
O'er regions of perennial snows;
Still 'tis the country not the less
Of him, who sows what ne'er may bless
His labours with autumnal bloom!

Yes! partial clans, in every clime,
Since first commenced the march of Time,
Where'er they rest — there'er they roam —
All unforgot,
Have still a spot

Which Memory loves, and heart calls — home!
From where Antarctic oceans roar
Round Patadonia's mountain shore;
To where grim Hecla's cone aspires,
With sides of snow, and throat of fires!