Commitment | Consecration | Failure | Lost | Poetry | Self

THE VISION OF THE PATRIOT
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 burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
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, unhonored, and unsung.
From “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Sir Walter Scott [1771- 1832]