The Exile's Bazaar
  • Home
  • About
  • Destinations
  • Book
  • Publications
  • Contact

Notes from a fascinating world.

The world is like a bazaar, full of interesting odds and ends, and I've been exiled into it. This is my all-over-the-map (literally and metaphorically) attempt at capturing some of the world's many wonders.

“I Vow to Thee, My Country” — on Patriotism for the Deracinated

5/29/2017

 
I like to play music on my laptop when I write. And the other day, for whatever reason, I started playing, over and over, a song from my high school days in New Zealand. I went to a church school, you see, although I’m not religious. An Anglican school, or Episcopalian, as Americans would say. And twice a week and sometimes on weekends we had to go to chapel. And every time we went to chapel we had to sing hymns. Some hymns stuck with me, including this one: “I Vow to Thee, My Country.”

But is it even a religious hymn? Some would describe it simply as a British patriotic song. Some call it one of Britain’s unofficial national anthems. Indeed the song came to prominence in the UK during WWI, when patriotism was all the rage. If you’re wondering why we kept singing it in New Zealand, well, as the New Zealand prime minister during WWII, Michael Joseph Savage, said when declaring war on Nazi Germany, “Where [Britain] goes, we go; where she stands, we stand.”
Picture
The flag of New Zealand. They really mean that Union Jack.
​Well, I am not British, and I’ve never lived there. It would sure seem strange if I owed some allegiance to the United Kingdom, even if Queen Elizabeth II is technically my head of state.

But in fact, the patriotic provenance of the song itself is a complicated matter. The man who wrote the lyrics was Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, an Anglo-Irishman. If the Irish connection doesn’t complicate matters enough, the melody was taken from the Planets Suite (“Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”) by Gustav Holst, who was of German origin on his father’s side. German! Who were the British fighting again?

So I, a boy of Chinese heritage born in Taiwan, was singing, in New Zealand in the 1990s, a British patriotic anthem written 80 years earlier by an Anglo-Irishman and an Anglo-German. “I Vow to Thee, My Country,” it said. But which country? What country? Whose country? Not to mention that I would subsequently move to the United States. And although I never became a citizen there, I invested so much in that country and what it (supposedly) represented that on some levels I came to be patriotic toward it as only an immigrant could be.

So why has the song stuck if I could never figure out what it meant for me?

Perhaps what appeals to me about the song despite my ambivalence toward the very concept of countries and nations is its second verse:

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

Given the Christian tradition whence it came, of course the verse implicitly refers to the Kingdom of Heaven, in which I do not believe. Indeed the final line is an allusion to Proverbs 3:17: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

But religion aside, this verse has always scanned for me as a description of the hypothetical country to which I might swear allegiance. A country that does not exist physically but prevails as an idea. The Kingdom of Heaven, sure, if you want to call it that. Or the City of God, as St. Augustine had it. 

Oscar Wilde said that patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. Undoubtedly this is true when patriotism is understood in a parochial manner: I happened to have been born in X country, therefore it must be the best. This point of view is not only vicious but simply silly.

But what of this other country, which I’ve heard of long ago? What of this other country that exists only as the sum total of our principles? I may have no physical country where I feel truly at home, but to this realm of ideals I can certainly make my pledge.

And I know that I’m not its only citizen. If you have been uprooted as I have, or if you’re simply inclined toward a higher notion of love for country than a mere accident of birth or devotion to a tract of land, then you may well be my compatriot. After all, soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase. So wherever it might manifest on earth, or even if it doesn’t but only persists in the fortress of faithful hearts, I vow to it, my country. And you ought to as well.

Comments are closed.

    Author

    Writer, traveler, lawyer, dilettante. Failed student of physics. Not altogether distinguished graduate of two Ivy League institutions. Immigrant twice over. "The grand tour is just the inspired man's way of getting home."
    Follow me on Twitter (@W_T_Han) and Instagram (@wthtravel).
    ​https://www.scmp.com/author/william-han

    同是天涯淪落人,
    ​相逢何必曾相識?

    Updates Mondays.

     
    Want to be notified of new posts?
    Get newsletter
    Powered By Constant Contact
     

    Archives

    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016

    Categories

    All
    Afghanistan
    Africa
    Amazon
    America
    Antarctica
    Anthropology
    Archaeology
    Architecture
    Argentina
    Armenia
    Art
    Astronomy
    Books
    Brazil
    Buddhism
    Caribbean
    Caribbeans
    Caucasus
    Central America
    Central Asia
    Chile
    China
    Christianity
    Cinema
    Colombia
    Costa Rica
    Criticism
    Cuba
    Culture
    Easter Island
    Economics
    Ecuador
    England
    Essay
    Ethiopia
    Etymology
    Europe
    Family
    Film
    France
    Goths
    Halloween
    Hinduism
    History
    Huns
    Iceland
    Immigration
    Inca
    Indonesia
    Iran
    Iraq
    Islam
    Japan
    Kenya
    Korea
    Law
    Linguistics
    Literature
    Maldives
    Martial-arts
    Mathematics
    Medicine
    Mexico
    Middle East
    Mongolia
    Mythology
    Nepal
    New Zealand
    Pacific-islands
    Panama
    Persia
    Peru
    Philosophy
    Politics
    Portraits & Encounters
    Portugal
    Psychology
    Race
    Refugees
    Religion
    Rome
    Russia
    Science
    Sherlock Holmes
    Singapore
    South America
    Spain
    Sri Lanka
    Superman
    Syria
    Taiwan
    Television
    Travel
    Travel Advice
    Ukraine
    United States
    USA
    Uzbekistan
    Vaccination
    Voltaire
    Women
    Writing
    Zoroastrianism

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • About
  • Destinations
  • Book
  • Publications
  • Contact