Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood.
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
_Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI_. SIR W. SCOTT.
Hear, Land o' Cakes and brither Scots
Frae Maiden Kirk to Johnny Groat's.
_On Capt. Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland_. R. BURNS.
HOLLAND.
As when the sea breaks o'er its bounds,
And overflows the level grounds,
Those banks and dams that, like a screen
Did keep it out, now keep it in.
_Hudibras_. S. BUTLER.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad Ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow,
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent Ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile;
The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign.
_The Traveller_. O. GOLDSMITH.
ITALY.
Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty, which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past,
On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,
And annals graved in characters of flame.
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