Poems, now first collected/The Pilgrims

by Edmund Clarence Stedman

 

THE PILGRIMS

O pilgrim from the Indies!
O guest from out the North,
Where low and dun the midnight sun
Upon the wave rides forth!
What country is most dear of all
Beneath the heaven blue?
The dearest land is one's own land,
Go search the wide world through.

O know you not that henceforth
All countries are as one?
Ere summer fail, the world shall hail
Its golden year begun.
But still each pilgrim answering names
The clime that gave him birth:
One's own land is the dearest land
Of all fair lands on earth.

Children's Song,
Columbian Exposition, 1893