The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1891-02-26
OHAUTAUQUA
OUR NATIVE LAND.
(Report for Glass Ed

(Report for Class Ed
"Breatbes there the man. with soul so dead,
Who never to h mself hath said.
This is my own, my native landT
Brother Chautauquans. such was the question
put to the thousands of his readers scattered
broadcast throughout the world by the great poet
Sir Walter Scott when he sat to pen his beautiful
and soul stirring verses on his native land. So
great was SCOTS detestaton for him who denies
the land of his nativity that he compares him to
the abandoned whose soul is dead within him
and consequently fit subject only for that eternal
abode of Gods accursed ones in that land beyond
the river where the lost groan in unspeakable
agony that shall never die. On the other hand, so
enchanted was he when the theme of his native
land was the sole arbiter of his thoughts that he
asked other pillow where to lay his weary
head and die than the Tevots stone beside the
Yarrow's stream in his own be loved Scotland.
30 Caledonia ia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for poetic child!
Lanu of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood.
Land of my sires what mortal hand
Can e'er unite the filial band
That knts me to thy rugged strand?
STILL as view each well known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me, of all bereft
Sole friends thy woods and streams left
And thus love them better still
Even in extremity of ill.,
By YarrOw S stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break.
Although it chill my withered cheek;
/ Still lay my head by Teviot's stone
/ Though there, forgotten and alone.
! The bard may draw his parting groan.'
These considerations urge to consider briefly
what nationality in its true aspect Nationality
or love for the country that gave you birth is,
after the love of God ard religion, the highest
was so with the Goth and the vandal. the Roman
and the Dane. That selfsame attribute
warmly in the breast of every poor, oppressed.
down-trodden Pole, well as the hardy Swiss who
from the giant Businesses of his rock built citidel
bound in the eternal embraces of the sOmbre
mountains, witnesses nothing of the beauty of nat
save in her most austere and rugged proper
tions Nationality therefore is naturally incul-
Gated sentiment and justly has Scotland's brill
liant poet written
''Breathes there the man. with soul so dead.
Who never to h mself hath said,
This is my own, my native laud?'
This subject of true nationality brings me to the
expression of an assertion long dormant within
me that l fear will bring upon many unfavor-
able criticisms and that is. that who does
not love his country, does not nor cannot love his
God. see in retrospective grand army of great
men who have marched by the last milestone of
their earthly journey and entered the great
known, and as view them, few. if any,
whose garlands of victory await them who, while
here below, severed their love of God from the
love they should ever bear their native land The
great Napoleon, chained in ST. Helena though
STEPPED to the lips in sin, brought by the love
he bore his gallant France to repentance. and to
acknowledge that the happest day of his life
that which he made his first communion
William, of Germany, ere the birds of victory had
perched his banner arms before the walls of
Sedan. Metz and Paris flashed the news to Berlin
with his thanks to God for His protection of
his beloved Germany. Daniel O'Connel, the
Moses of Hibernia, after life long service for his
God and his country, he lay on his bed of death
within Genoa's holy shrine bequeathed his soul to
his God his heart to Rome and his body to his ma
tive land. Having descended the ladder of famed
men upon whose deeds historians love to ponder
In spirit traverse the 1000 miles of land and sea
that separate me from my own dear Ireland. In
spirtI kneel beside the grave of a fond mother
and from that grassy mound pluck the shamrock
with which it was her Joy to bedeck my youthful
brow in childhood's happy hours. Will any one
have the hardihood to tell me that if during the
vicissitudes of lfe forget her and become a rene.
gade to the green hills and verdant valleys she
loved so WELL and which with me she loved to
roam in days gone by never to return that 1 can
possibly love God at that hated and despsed hour2
Should that time come for any of us here then
may at once begin to doubt the existence of that
love by which alone we can reach heaven. Cherish
then your native land and whatever your nation
atty be let your life shine with it that no doubt
can possibly exist of your love for
"That spot Of earth, that gave you birth"
To those of Irish birth or lineage among you I
say love Ireland fearlessly and WE'LL let her past