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Shall ever

on dane and terver,

To all their heavily Colors True
In Hackening frost or crimson duw,
And God love us as we love thee,
Thrice
holy Flower of Liberty

Then hail the banner of the free,
The starry Flows of Liberty !

Olion Wendell Homes

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POEMS OF PATRIOTISM AND FREEDOM.

BREATHES THERE THE MAN.

FROM "THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL," CANTO VI.

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.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

MY COUNTRY.

THERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside,
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons imparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth:
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air.
In every clime, the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole ;
For in this land of Heaven's peculiar race,
The heritage of nature's noblest grace,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend.
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strow with fresh flowers the narrow way of life:

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Before the gates of Sutrium

Is met the great array; A proud man was Lars Porsena Upon the trysting-day.

For all the Etruscan armies
Were ranged beneath his eye,
And many a banished Roman,
And many a stout ally;
And with a mighty following,
To join the muster, came
The Tusculan Mamilius,

Prince of the Latian name.

But by the yellow Tiber

Was tumult and affright; From all the spacious champaign To Rome men took their flight. A mile around the city

The throng stopped up the ways; A fearful sight it was to see

Through two long nights and days.

For aged folk on crutches,

And women great with child, And mothers, sobbing over babes That clung to them and smiled, And sick men borne in litters

High on the necks of slaves,

And troops of sunburned husbandmen With reaping-hooks and staves,

And droves of mules and asses

Laden with skins of wine, And endless flocks of goats and sheep, And endless herds of kine, And endless trains of wagons,

That creaked beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, Choked every roaring gate.

Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.
The Fathers of the City,

They sat all night and day,

For every hour some horseman came With tidings of dismay.

To eastward and to westward

Have spread the Tuscan bands, Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote In Crustumerium stands. Verbenna down to Ostia

Hath wasted all the plain; Astur hath stormed Janiculum,

And the stout guards are slain.

I wis, in all the Senate

There was no heart so bold
But sore it ached, and fast it beat,
When that ill news was told.
Forthwith up rose the Consul,

Up rose the Fathers all;

In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall.

They held a council, standing

Before the River-gate;

Short time was there, ye well may guess,

For musing or debate.

Out spake the Consul roundly:

"The bridge must straight go down ; For, since Janiculum is lost,

Naught else can save the town."

Just then a scout came flying,

All wild with haste and fear : "To arms! to arms! Sir Consul, Lars Porsena is here."

On the low hills to westward
The Consul fixed his eye,
And saw the swarthy storm of dust
Rise fast along the sky.

And nearer fast and nearer

Doth the red whirlwind come;
And louder still, and still more loud,
From underneath that rolling cloud,
Is heard the trumpets' war-note proud,
The trampling and the hum.
And plainly and more plainly
Now through the gloom appears,
Far to left and far to right,

In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,

The long array of spears.

And plainly and more plainly,

Above that glimmering line,
Now might ye see the banners

Of twelve fair cities shine;
But the banner of proud Clusium
Was highest of them all,
The terror of the Umbrian,
The terror of the Gaul.

And plainly and more plainly

Now might the burghers know,

By port and vest, by horse and crest,
Each warlike Lucumo:

There Cilnius of Arretium

On his fleet roan was seen;

And Astur of the fourfold shield,

Girt with the brand none else may wield; Tolumnius with the belt of gold,

And dark Verbenna from the hold

By reedy Thrasymene.

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