sles?
'Tis but a freckle,--never mind it!
He laughs, and all his prairies roll,
Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,
And ridges stretched from pole to pole
Heave till they crack their iron knuckles!

But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honour turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant:
"An islet is a world," she said,
"When glory with its dust has blended,
And Britain keeps her noble dead
Till earth and seas and skies are rended!"

Beneath each swinging forest-bough
Some arm as stout in death reposes,--
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow
Her valour's life-blood runs in roses;
Nay, let our brothers of the West
Write smiling in their florid pages,
One-half her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp
Her slender handful holds together; With
cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between;--
Our little mother isle, God bless her!

Oliver Wendell Holmes

FOOTNOTES:
[4] Robert Burns

GOD IS OUR REFUGE

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;
THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE.

There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God shall help her at the dawn of morning.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered his voice, the earth melted.
THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;
THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE.

Come, behold the works of the LORD,
What desolations he hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariots in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted