by Coleridge · Cluster: Nationalism and Patriotism · Democracy · Liberty Political Freedom
Abstract
An album poem sent with an American minister’s daughter, defining country by shared law, language and faith and offering the olive-leaf of brotherly love after the ‘fratricidal war’. Themes: kinship of nations, reconciliation, patriotism.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Nationalism and Patriotism, Reform, Friendship Historical References: American Civil War, Bible
Testo integrale / Full text
Child of my muse! in Barbour’s gentle hand
Go cross the main: thou seek’st no foreign land:
‘Tis not the clod beneath our feet we name
Our country. Each heaven-sanctioned tie the same,
Laws, manners, language, faith, ancestral blood, 5
Domestic honour, awe of womanhood: —
With kindling pride thou wilt rejoice to see
Britain with elbow-room and doubly free!
Go seek thy countrymen! and if one scar
Still linger of that fratricidal war, 10
Look to the maid who brings thee from afar;
Be thou the olive-leaf and she the dove,
And say, I greet thee with a brother’s love!
S. T. COLERIDGE.