Introspection - Aboard Train To Cherbourg

( Originally Published 1923 )

THERE is a land that is dotted with silvery lakes, surrounded by wooded hills that in spring are filled with smiling hepaticas, violets, and trilliums ; a land where the pastures have golden splashes of gay dandelions and as you travel the highway an incense of wild grapes ladens the air with its delicate perfume; a land where in summer you listen to the melody of the birds, the thrush, the catbird, the warblers, and the song of the laughing brook as you wade the streams of clear spring water endeavoring to hook the sportive trout; a land where in the fall nature paints her foliage in a riot of color that makes you hold your very breath in ex-cited admiration, and the roadside is adorned with the hardy asters, goldenrod, and helianthus ; a land where the good Father gives us a fifth season, Indian Summer, made up of all the good from the other four; a land where winter brings a mantle of snow and frost transforming the woods and brooks into fairy-lands and giving to man vigor, energy, and resisting powers, and on the stilly, frosty nights the sky is so clear that the stars hang like suspended jewels and the Milky-Way appears as a pathway of pearls strewn across the heavens.

Have you tasted strawberries that were covered with dew and laden with a delicate essence from the bosom of mother earth; have you eaten cherries succulent with spicy juices from nature's own laboratory; have you plucked the rose-tinted peach and biting into it allowed its ambrosial fluid to trickle over your tongue; have you eaten the peerless, golden Bartlett pear, dripping with juicy sweetness as it dissolved in your mouth; have you sat down in a vineyard and dined sumptuously on the sweet nectar from the luscious purple and green grapes ; have you tasted apples that sprayed your face with their incomparable wine? These are all to be found in a land of plenty where the meadows are green and the gentle summer breezes wave the golden grain; where the harvest is great; where starvation never lurks; where opportunities abide; and where men are free, chivalrous, and wholesome.

That's Michigan, my Michigan, and my heart turns to thee and home.

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell ;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—
Despite his titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."

SIR WALTER SCOTT