They craved for knowledge, whose pure light
Might pierce the moral gloom;
They left the temple of their race,
They left their father’s tomb:
They left them for a distant isle
Far o’er the distant main;
But they were strong in faith, and felt
It would not be in vain.
What high and holy thoughts sustained
Their progress o’er the sea,
They left their home, which never more
Again their home might be;
A power far mightier than their own
Was with them night and day;
They feared not, and they faltered not
God kept them on their way.
At last they reached our English isle,
The glorious and the free:
O England, in thine hour of pride
How much is asked of thee?
Thy ships have mastered many a sea,
Thy victories many a land;
A power almost as strong as fate
Is in thy red right hand.
A nobler enterprise awaits
Thy triumph and thy toil;
’Tis thine to sow the seeds of good
In many a foreign soil.
Freedom, and knowledge, justice, truth,
Are gifts which should be thine;
And, more than all, that purer faith
Which maketh men divine.
Those strangers sought an English home,
And there they learnt to know
Those hopes which sweeten life and cheer,
Yet have no rest below.
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