Independence Day #3...

...is not an original. But, it expresses the Frog's feelings.

A bit of background. The language is stilted if not Elizabethan, so if you learned to read by the 'hooked on phonics' method, it may appear to be gobledygook. It helps if you have and awareness of history. It's part of a mid 17th century poem by that son of the Middle Border, Walter Scott.

. . . . .

The Lay of the Last Minstrel
by Sir Walter Scott

Canto the Sixth - stanzas 1 and 2

I
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 burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
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 those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

. . . . .

II
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me, of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.
By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither'd cheek:
Still lay my head by Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.

. . . . .

The 1st stanza fairly describes my feelings about my country. In the 2nd stanza I would only have to substitute the locations in which I spent my youth with the poets locations to have near identical feelings.

. . . . .

What Beauty and extravagance of feeling! I pitty the output of today's public education that can (maybe) read these words but feel nothing. The modern mind seems ground so far down by constant bombardment with noise that what enters the ear is ignored by the heart. Perhaps the heart knows inherently what is true and good (God in us) and rejects what is not good and true. This would seem a valid explanation for existing hoards of hollow people.