any
religion or knowledge of any God, yet very trusty, quick of
apprehension, ripe-witted, just....

Now, because I expect you coming unto us, with other of our friends, I
thought good to advertise you of a few things needful. Be careful to
have a very good bread room to put your biscuits in. Let not your meat
be dry-salted; none can better do it than the sailors. Let your meal be
so hard trod in your cask that you shall need an adz or hatchet to work
it out with. Trust not too much on us for corn at this time, for we
shall have little enough till harvest.

Build your cabins as open as you can, and bring good store of clothes
and bedding with you. Bring every man a musket or fowling piece. Let
your piece be long in the barrel, and fear not the weight of it, for
most of our shooting is from stands.

I forbear further to write for the present, hoping to see you by the
next return. So I take my leave, commending you to the Lord for a safe
conduct unto us, resting in him,

Your loving friend,
EDWARD WINSLOW.

_Plymouth in New England,
this 11th of December, 1621._

POEMS OF HOME AND COUNTRY

I. "THIS IS MY OWN, MY NATIVE LAND"[40]

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 concentered 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.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand?

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 40: From the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," by Sir Walter Scott.]

II. THE GREEN LITTLE SHAMROCK OF IRELAND[41]

There's a dear little plant that grows in our isle,
'Twas St. Patrick himself, sure, that set it;
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile,
And with dew from his eye often wet it.
It thrives through the