A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet Viii

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