A POEM ON PATRIOTISM

 

A POEM ON PATRIOTISM

‘Patriotism’ is defined as love of one’s country and willingness to defend it. According to the American orator and statesman DANIEL WEBSTER(1782-1852) : “Let our whole object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.”

            The poem given below is by the English poet-novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Its title is “Breathes There The Man”. Its theme is that an un-patriotic  person  however great he may be in other respects is worthless and ignoble because his heart never cries out, ‘‘This is my own, my native land”.

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

‘This is my own, my native land!’   

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d

As home his footsteps he hath turn’d

From wandering on a foreign strand ?

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no Minstrel raptures swell ;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour’d  and unsung.”

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G.R.Kanwal

16 May 2024