" 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.
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