Dominion status
We hold our little heirlooms, our only heritage;
We vision visions in the day, we dream of things to be;
We work with honest effort to earn whatever wage
Endeavour earns, though full success may fail for such as we.
We, who are children's children of wistful parents born,
Taught in the old tradition that took the past for guide;
We who have lived asunder, and felt ourselves forlorn
In open upland acres in countries new and wide.
Our parents' parents wandered as trustful pioneers
Into the lands we hold today, but left their hearts behind,
And, like the swinging compass point by which the sailor steers,
Their love swung north across the seas swept by the southern wind.
They knew the glories of the past; their's was the story told
To those who gave us right of birth before they went to rest,
Of red-beard Frederick fast asleep, of Jason's fleece of gold;
Of Arthur's feats in Camelot and Siegfried's dragon quest.
They felt the proud possessor's pride that brooks no surrogate,
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That mocks the new and holds the past as we the present hold;
The pride that teaches how to bear, to suffer, and to wait,
The pride that turns the gathered dross to purest garnered gold.
But we, their children's children, long sundered by the sea,
That lack the love they bore their land because we love our own,
Have felt the stirring spirit-spark that quickens loyalty
To newer, fairer, lordlier faiths than they had ever known.
Not to the central stem alone shall what is faithful cleave,
Nor grudge the outer wards the love long lavished on the core;
Nor clamour, whimpering, for the care the weaker ones receive,
Nor shrink aghast to shoulder loads their fathers' fathers bore.
O tender rights are children's rights, their pride a loyal pride!
And potent love is children's love, misplaced although it be!
And though ye deem the parents' faith has flickered out and died
As died the sunlight's rainbow show upon the western sea,
It lives in us that lost so much and gained so much the more
What time we learned love breeds new love to light the new made way;
And living, leads us on to tread the paths ye trod before,
And mark, like ye, the horizon's pearl that means the break of day!
O give us what we need the most from those we name our kin -
The frank, fraternal, friendly trust, the tribute to your soul,
For ye yourselves have taught us faith, the strength to dare and win,
The courage to be uncontrolled safe by our own control!
Ye are our leaders on the way; ye blazed the trail we tread;
Ye raised the standard, spoke the word that heartens, ‘Liberty!’
Ye winnowed from the chaff the grain to make your children bread;
Ye urged by practice, precept, fact the right of being free!
We pledge our faith - the youngster's faith that means so much and more
In trust, in hope, in love exchanged for love and hope and trust,
Than ye can scarcely read aright who lean on old world lore
And deem we pledge our faith, our hope, our love because - we must!
Nay, not for profit to be gained by partnership in power,
Nor yet for help in time of hurt, or hand that scrubs a hand -
No harlot's bargain do we ask nor beg for what is lower
The interest of those that neither love nor understand.
We claim, by all we hold as faith, the younger brother's right
To carve our way, to blaze our trail, to make ourselves a name.
To conquer if our courage holds or lose the coming fight,
To battle through and bear the brunt, the burden and the blame!
Jagger-biblioteek, Universiteit van Kaapstad |
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