["We have no time for men who spit on their country's flag." -- "Sunday Times," April 18, 1909.]
Her brown hair trails in the ridges, while her blue eyes laugh in the bays;
Her sinews are girded bridges, and her veins are the river ways.
Her arms fold the golden hours, and her breast is the green-grassed plain
That breaks into laughing flowers from the kiss of the Autumn rain.
Her robe is the mist of morning, and her girdle the wealth of mines,
And sweet for her sole adorning the star-snow of clematis twines;
She has rocked you on her ocean, she has cradled you on her heart;
Did she dream of unchanged devotion, of the pride of your manhood's part?
The breast that has nursed your childhood, and the wings that were bent above,
In dusk of the tangled wildwood, with the warmth of a mother's love,
You have spurned in idle folly, you have seared with treacherous flame --
From Palm-world to Land of Holly, there is flashed forth your deed of shame!
Go! Slink to your hiding places, where the Cowards and Ingrates breed;
We ask for no shame-dark faces in the hour of our Country's need.
First published in The Sunday Times, 9 May 1909
