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Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/120

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108
SONGS, LEGENDS, AND BALLADS.

They sing in strange lands the sweet songs of their home,
Their emerald Zion enthroned in the billows;
To work, not to weep by the rivers they come:
Their harps are not hanged in despair on the willows.
The hope of the mother beats youthful and strong,
Responsive and true to her children's pulsations,
No petrified heart has she saved from the wrong—
Our Niobe lives for her place 'mong the nations!

Then drink, all her sons—be they Keltic or Danish,
Or Norman or Saxon—one mantle was o'er us;
Let race lines, and creed lines, and every line, vanish—
We drink as the Gael: "To the Mother that bore us!"