They tried to fit you with an English song And clip your speech into the English tale. But, even from the first, the words went wrong, The catbird pecked away the nightingale.

The homesick men begot high-cheekboned things Whose wit was whittled with a different sound And Thames and all the rivers of the kings Ran into Mississippi and were drowned.

They planted England with a stubborn trust. But the cleft dust was never English dust.

Stepchild of every exile from content And all the disavouched, hard-bitten pack Shipped overseas to steal a continent With neither shirts nor honor to their back.

Pimping grandee and rump-faced regicide, Apple-cheeked younkers from a windmill-square, Puritans stubborn as the nails of Pride, Rakes from Versailles and thieves from County Clare,