Their mountains are remote.My mountains are near—you may pat their shoulders and lay your cheek against the throbbing of their hearts.
"They told me that I should find people greater than my own.It was not true.The faces and the hearts of their people are stained with the mire of the world.My people are clean—the windows of their souls are transparent, their lips are fresh and sweet.
"I have known no rest, I have known no joy, I have known no moment of forgetfulness.The calling of my soul comes yammering through all the darkened pathways of my being.Its entreaties, its wailings, its pleadings—they flay the ear-drums of my consciousness.It neither sleeps nor does it ever cease its far-spent call.
"They told me that their cities were more splendid than any sight that I had ever seen.It was not true.Soot-grimed monstrosities of shape and form, swarmed over and around by taloned things with beaks of gold!My thieving mynah birds in shabby stolen nests, are less obscene upon the face of this green earth.
"They told me that their flowers were more fair.Weak things in beds and boxes, trimmed into absurdities, or bred to a disgrace upon the seed-cups of their ancestors!My flowers are pure and sturdy, and they grow their own free way, untrammeled and untortured,And of a breath so sweet—you close your eyes and smile, and look within your heart for some sweet thought to fit.
"When I came away from the land that I love,I left my soul behind, because it refused to come with me,And there it stays, calling and crying to me,And begging of me to come home."
