Land and Man Unite by Pablo Neruda — Read

Araucania, cluster of torrential southland beech,

O merciless Homeland, my dark love, solitary in your rainy kingdom:

You were only mineral gullets, hands of cold, fists accustomed to splitting rocks:

Homeland, you were the peace of hardness and your men were whisper, harsh apparition, fierce wind.

My Araucanian ancestors had no crests of luminous plumes, they didn't rest on nuptial flowers, they spun no gold for the priest: they were stone and tree, roots of the intractable brambles, lance-shaped leaves, heads of militant metal.

Ancestors, you had just raised your ear to the gallop, just over the hilltops, when Araucania's lightning struck.

The forefathers of stone became shadows, they were bound to the forest, the natural darkness, they became icy light, asperities of land and thorns, and so they waited in the depths of the indomitable wilds: one was a red tree that watched, another a fragment of metal that listened, another a blasting wind and drill, another blended in with the trail.

Homeland, ship of snow, harsh foliage: you were born there, when your man asked the earth for his standard and when land and air and stone and rain, leaf, root, perfume, howl, covered the child like a mantle, they loved him and defended him.

That's how the country was born unanimous: unity before combat.