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 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, unhonored , and unsung.

From 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Do they even teach such stuff in Junior High Schools any longer?

High Schools?

For those of y'all who knew this excerpt from school, tell me where you first ran into it!

I bet we all read this excerpt for the first time, in the very same place!

Wanna bet?

Eric The(ManWithoutA...?)Hun

Quoted: IIRC, it was printed at one end or the other of the short story "The Man Without a Country". 6th or 7th grade, I think.  Maybe 8th.

Ding, Ding, Ding!

That is certainly where I first heard this excerpt from The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and for all you hoi-polloi out there who've never read 'The Man Without a Country', I also commend that short story for your future readings.

Here's a snippet from Edward Everett Hale's classic work:

(To set the story, Phillip Nolan, late a Lieutenant in the US Navy, was convicted of treason in connection with Aaron Burr's plot to seize the Western US. At his trial he damns the 'United States' and wishes that he would never hear of it again! The Judge grants his request by sentencing him to life imprisonment aboard the USS Levant, a 'corvette', with the proviso that none aboard the ship ever mention the United States to him again.)  

"So Nolan was permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things so often now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without a thought of what was coming,—

      “Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,”—
 
It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, still unconsciously or mechanically,—

        “This is my own, my native land!”
 
Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,—

        “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,”—
 
By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,—

        “For him no minstrel raptures swell;
        High though his titles, proud his name,
        Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
        Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
        The wretch, concentred all in self,”—

and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, “And by Jove,” said Phillips, “we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his Walter Scott to him.”

Read the entire short story here: www.bartleby.com/310/6/1.html

A splendid story that was first published in 1863 during the worst year of the War Between the States!

Well, the second worst year of the WBTS.

The final year, 1865, was the very worst year!

Eric The(AsYetUnreconstructed)Hun