THE seed that wasteful autumn cast <br />To waver on its stormy blast, <br />Long o'er the wintry desert tost, <br />Its living germ has never lost. <br />Dropped by the weary tempest's wing, <br />It feels the kindling ray of spring, <br />And, starting from its dream of death, <br />Pours on the air its perfumed breath. <br /> <br />So, parted by the rolling flood, <br />The love that springs from common blood <br />Needs but a single sunlit hour <br />Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; <br />Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, <br />From shore to shore, from zone to zone, <br />Where summer's falling roses stain <br />The tepid waves of Pontchartrain, <br />Or where the lichen creeps below <br />Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow. <br /> <br />Though fiery sun and stiffening cold <br />May change the fair ancestral mould, <br />No winter chills, no summer drains <br />The life-blood drawn from English veins, <br />Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows <br />The love that with its fountain rose, <br />Unchanged by space, unwronged by time, <br />From age to age, from clime to clime!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-an-english-friend/
