Nation and Patriotism

Athens, nurse of men.

Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Limps after in base imitation.

England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of watery Neptune.

This is the English, not the Turkish court; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, But Harry Harry.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two.

It was a’ for our rightfu’ King We left fair Scotland’s strand.

From scenes like these, old Scotia’s grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!

Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan; You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man.

And did those feet in ancient time

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

Fairest Isle, all isles excelling.

I, too, sing America.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.

The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice -- and always has been.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.

Take up the White Man’s burden, 4 Send forth the best ye breed— Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need.

Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

And what should they know of England who only England know?