I will sit down awhile in dalliance <br />With my dead life, and dream that it is young. <br />My earliest memories have their home in France, <br />The chestnut woods of Bearn and streams among, <br />Where first I learned to stammer the French tongue. <br />Fair ancient France. No railroad insolence <br />Had mixed her peoples then, and still men clung <br />Each to his ways, and viewed the world askance. <br />We, too, as exiles from our northern shore, <br />Surveyed things sparsely; and my own child's scorn <br />Remained, how long, a rebel to all lore <br />Save its lost English, nor was quite o'erborne <br />Till, as I swore I'd speak no French frog's word, <br />I swore in French, and so laid down my sword.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-new-pilgrimage-sonnet-viii/
