Strange land! You lie there like a dragon crouched, With ridged and spiny back and lashing tail, Narrowed to thinness where seas almost meet And, peering across peaks, each other hail. Old land! Your people lived and loved and wrought, And reared to heaven many a mounting pile, When Grecian temples stood in loveliness, And Cleopatra's barge slipped down the Nile. Sad land! Your virile people were enslaved, bowed down through centuries of toil and pain, Tortured for bits of silver and of gold, Their bodies broken for the white man's gain. Brave land! Ever striving to cast off the yoke! Again and yet again a patriot dies, That Freedom's sun may not be hid in fog, But light the land from blue and cloudless skies. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER ABBEY by LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA by MATTHEW ARNOLD THE AUTHOR'S PARTING ADDRESS TO THE MUSE by BERNARD BARTON ON A GRAVE IN THE FOREST by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT SONNETS OF SEVEN CITIES: NEW YORK by BERTON BRALEY AN EPITAPH ON MRS. EL: Y by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) HASTINGS' SONNETS: 6 by SAMUEL EGERTON BRYDGES |