Explore "Patria (Sonnets)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I would not even ask my heart to say / If I could love some other land as well / As thee, my country, had I felt the spell / Of Italy at birth, or learned to obey / The charm of France, or England's mighty sway. / I would not be so much an infidel / As once to dream, or fashion words to tell, / What land could hold my love from thee away.
For like a law of nature in my blood / I feel thy sweet and secret sovereignty, / And woven through my soul thy vital sign. / My life is but a wave, and thou the flood; / I am a leaf and thou the mother-tree; / Nor should I be at all, were I not thine.
June, 1904.