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Album Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

His Country by Thomas Hardy

Performed by
Thomas Hardy

His Country Annotated

[He travels southward, and looks around;]
I journeyed from my native spot
Across the south sea shine,
And found that people in hall and cot
Laboured and suffered each his lot
Even as I did mine.

[and cannot discern the boundary]
Thu        s noting them in meads and marts
It did not seem to me
That my dear country with its hearts,
Minds, yearnings, worse and better parts
Had ended with the sea.

[of his native country;]
I further and further went anon,
As such I still surveyed,
And further yet—yea, on and on,
And all the men I looked upon
Had heart-strings fellow-made.

[or where his duties to his fellow-creatures end;]
I traced the whole terrestrial round,
Homing the other side;
Then said I, "What is there to bound
My denizenship? It seems I have found
Its scope to be world-wide."

[nor who are his enemies]
I asked me: "Whom have I to fight,
And whom have I to dare,
And whom to weaken, crush, and blight?
My country seems to have kept in sight
On my way everywhere."

1913.

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