It is the close of day:
Over the hill and town
The sun goes down:
Clearly from hillside fields with evening gray
I hear the men at work among the hay:
From the plain far away
Goes up the smoke of town and mine and mill:
And looking down
On field and town,
And teeming, thriving plain and distant hill,
Spreading, for all who read, their goodly page,
My heart leaps up to cry:
"Glory to God on high,
Who giveth us a goodly heritage!"
Just now in some far clime
Even at this time,
The darkness dies away,
As now our English daylight fades to gray:
And the sun comes up to the toil and clamour of day.
And o'er the misty plains, — thatched hamlets, rising smoke,
And the strange sunny street
Busy with wakening tread of hurrying feet,
And dark-skinned alien folk,
Strange beach and bay and feathery-forested hill,
Drums that are mine and thine waken and thrill:
"Yea! I have a goodly heritage!"
So, howe'er sore bested,
With neither stick nor stone
To call my own,
Nor roof above my head,
Still could I stand
On English land
And hold my head up with my peers,
Full-armed with pride against all alien jeers,
Saying: "Mine own from immemorial years;
Mine thro' all floods that whelm, all storms that rage:
Yea! I have a goodly heritage!"