PATRIOT I am, but in so strange a fashion No reasons of the mind must rule this passion. Russia's blood-purchased glory, The calm that best her haughty trust beseems, Her dark and ancient day of hallowed story: -- 'Tis none of these that prompts my happier dreams. I love her steppe, -- I know not why it is, -- Better, the steppe and the cold silences; Forests that wave illimitable and free; And river-floods big-brimming like a sea. And oh! a sleigh that posts Along a byway track, -- and unaware You meet a tardy beam that pricks the proof Shadow of night, -- the spirit of hearth and roof Far out upon the air! The trembling fire some wretched hovel boasts! Give me the smoke of stubblefields alight: A carzvan of nomad wains that winds Across the enormous weald; And on the hill, in the dun fallowfield, A pair of stems, two birches glistening white! I take such joy as many men know not, To see a barn-door heaped, a straw-thatched cot, A window and the carven shutter-blinds. Some dewy holiday evening I'll sit by To watch them dance, long hours, nor tire -- not I -- Of the trampling and the whistling: how it glads The heart to hear their talk, these tipsy lads! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JIM, WHO RAN AWAY FROM HIS NURSE, AND WAS EATEN BY A LION by HILAIRE BELLOC LINES ON HEARING THE ORGAN by CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE: THE POWER OF MUSIC by SAMUEL LISLE LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD IN IRELAND: 1. LORD CRASHTON by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM BLUE BUTTERFLY by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |