Lines (Child of my muse! ... )

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lines written in Commonplace Book of Miss Barbour,
Daughter of the Minister of the U.S.A. to England.

Child of my muse! in Barbour's gentle hand
Go cross the main: thou seek'st no foreign land:
'Tis not the clod beneath our feet we name
Our country. Each heaven-sanctioned tie the same,
Laws, manners, language, faith, ancestral blood,
Domestic honour, awe of womanhood: --
With kindling pride thou wilt rejoice to see
Britain with elbow-room and doubly free!
Go seek thy countrymen! and if one scar
Still linger of that fratricidal war,
Look to the maid who brings thee from afar;
Be thou the olive-leaf and she the dove,
And say I greet thee with a brother's love!

Grove, Highgate, August 1829