Читать книгу The Seven Seas - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 8

We've drunk to the Queen – God bless her! —

We've drunk to our mothers' land;

We've drunk to our English brother

(But he does not understand);

We've drunk to the wide creation,

And the Cross swings low to the morn,

Last toast, and of obligation,

A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,

But not their hearts that roam!

We learned from our wistful mothers

To call old England "home";

We read of the English sky-lark,

Of the spring in the English lanes,

But we screamed with the painted lories

As we rode on the dusty plains!

They passed with their old-world legends —

Their tales of wrong and dearth —

Our fathers held by purchase,

But we by the right of birth;

Our heart's where they rocked our cradle,

Our love where we spent our toil,

And our faith and our hope and our honour

We pledge to our native soil!

I charge you charge your glasses —

I charge you drink with me

To the men of the Four New Nations,

And the Islands of the Sea —

To the last least lump of coral

That none may stand outside,

And our own good pride shall teach us

To praise our comrade's pride.

To the hush of the breathless morning

On the thin, tin, crackling roofs,

To the haze of the burned back-ranges

And the dust of the shoeless hoofs —

To the risk of a death by drowning,

To the risk of a death by drouth —

To the men of a million acres,

To the Sons of the Golden South.

To the Sons of the Golden South, (Stand up!)

And the life we live and know,

Let a fellow sing o' the little things he cares about,

If a fellow fights for the little things he cares about

With the weight of a single blow!

To the smoke of a hundred coasters,

To the sheep on a thousand hills,

To the sun that never blisters,

To the rain that never chills —

To the land of the waiting springtime,

To our five-meal, meat-fed men,

To the tall deep-bosomed women,

And the children nine and ten!

And the children nine and ten, (Stand up!)

And the life we live and know,

Let a fellow sing o' the little things he cares about,

If a fellow fights for the little things he cares about