America For Me
It’s now or never. I’ve been wanting to write a blog for years and never had the gall. I don’t know why today is any different. Perhaps the right mix of courage, free time, and realizing that time is slipping away. I’ll either write now, or perhaps I never will. What have I got to lose?
In the past I’ve considered writing about everything from poetry to politics to philosophy along with music and food and loftier ideas like Being and Nothingness, Freedom and Responsibility, Life and Death. But with it being the eve of the Fourth of July, I figured it’d be appropriate to begin with a patriotic poem: America for Me by Henry Van Dyke. I’ll get into that in just a moment.
You may wonder how I got into poetry in the first place. In school, we all learned about stanzas and alliteration and iambic pentameter, the latter which most forgot…. or never knew. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until a few years ago when I picked up an antique book entitled, One Hundred and One Poems, filled with pages of prose from the greats— Longfellow, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and more— that I developed an appreciation for poetry as an adult. I later found out that my paternal grandmother loved poetry. Apparently, she used to recite Langston Hughes. It dawned on me— the love of poetry must run through my veins.
The word ‘patriot’ can be rather charged. To some, it illicits a mental image of far-right so-called radicals who love their guns and their trucks and well, Trump. The American Flag evokes a negative sense in some who see it as a symbol of the oppressive patriarchy. That is a subjective truth which plagues a good fraction of our nation. And that saddens me. How awful to hate your country! Do the Greeks hate Greece? The French, France? Do Brazilians hate Brazil? Do the Chinese hate China? Perhaps they abhor their government, but loving your government and loving your country are two very different things.
The Pledge of Allegiance is no longer said at the outset of the school day. Schoolchildren do not stand. Nor are they encourgage or required to. Quite the opposite. Many are taught to disregard the Pledge, hate the nation, hate its leaders, hate a certain political party. In my opinion, political ideology should not be espoused in school. Children are there to learn how to read, write, and develop critical thinking skills. Anything else is indoctrination. As the adage says, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
The presence of the American flag and saying the Pledge is a totem-pole for meaning and belonging. Without a center, it’s hard to know where you come from and where you’re going. Even nomadic peoples set up a totem-pole to serve as a center from which they can draw meaning and triangulate their place in the world. In many towns, there is a church at the center. Again, this is where people draw meaning. From something divine. Something unseen, yet something permanent and eternal. Something holy and sacred juxtaposed with our Fallen stateI have not read the book—yet—but Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning seeks to evaluate how people make meaning for themselves. And lo’ and behold, people get meaning from responsibility, not pleasure seeking. We are taught to seek happiness, not responsibility. And this is why so many today report being depressed and anxious. It stems from a lack of meaning.
But I digress— back to the poem. When I first read this, I must admit, tears welled in my eyes. Not that the peom was overly sad. To the contrary, it was elegantly patriotic. It struck a chord. And that is why poetry is so wonderful. It puts eternal truths into rhyme, or at least some form of order, so that when the reader reads it, he or she is deeply moved (or perhaps confused—which is the case for many highschoolers). In school, poetry can be confusing and land on deaf ears. It can only be fully appreciated after one has experienced the pain, sorrows, joys, triumph, and defeats inevitable in life.
Without further ado, here is the poem. I hope you enjoy it as much as do!
America for Me
Henry Van Dyke
'TIS fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,—
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!
Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled;
But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!
I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack:
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,—
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.
Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the bléssed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.