Though ages long have passed

Since our Fathers left their home,

Their pilot in the blast,

O'er untravelled seas to roam,

Yet lives the blood of England in our veins !
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?

While the language free and bold
Which the Bard of Avon sung,
In which our Milton told

How the vault of heaven rung

When Satan, blasted, fell with his host;
While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,
From rock to rock repeat

Round our coast;

While the manners, while the arts,

That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts, -

Between let Oa a roll,

Our joint communion breaking with the sun : Yet still from either beach

The voice of blood shall reach,

More audible than speech,

"We are One."

WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

SONG OF MARION'S MEN.

OUR band is few, but true and tried,
Our leader frank and bold;

The British soldier trembles
When Marion's name is told.

Our fortress is the good greenwood,
Our tent the cypress-tree;
We know the forest round us,

As seamen know the sea;

We know its walls of thorny vines,

Its glades of reedy grass,

Its safe and silent islands

Within the dark morass.

Woe to the English soldiery

That little dread us near!
On them shall light at midnight
A strange and sudden fear;
When, waking to their tents on fire,
They grasp their arms in vain,
And they who stand to face us

Are beat to earth again;
And they who fly in terror deem
A mighty host behind,
And hear the tramp of thousands
Upon the hollow wind.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

WARREN'S ADDRESS.

STAND! the ground's your own, my braves!
Will ye give it up to slaves?
Will ye look for greener graves?

Hope ye mercy still?
What's the mercy despots feel?
Hear it in that battle-peal!
Read it on yon bristling steel!
Ask it, ye who will.

Fear

ye foes who kill for hire? Will ye to your homes retire?

Look behind you ! - they're afire !

And, before you, see

Who have done it! From the vale On they come ! - and will ye quail? Leaden rain and iron hail

Let their welcome be !

In the God of battles trust!
Die we may, and die we must:

But, O, where can dust to dust

Be consigned so well,

As where heaven its dews shall shed On the martyred patriot's bed,

And the rocks shall raise their head, Of his deeds to tell?

JOHN PIERPONT.

CARMEN BELLICOSUM.

In their ragged regimentals
Stood the old Continentals,

Yielding not,

When the grenadiers were lunging,

And like hail fell the plunging

Cannon-shot;

When the files

Of the isles,

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

banner of the rampant Unicorn,

And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the

roll of the drummer,

Through the morn!

Then with eyes to the front all, And with guns horizontal,

Stood our sires; And the balls whistled deadly, And in streams flashing redly Blazed the fires;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still

That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,

Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,

Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a
spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet : That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his

flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare Gaze at hun with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock

When he came to the bridge in Concord town
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere ;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,

A cry of defiance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore !
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

WHEN Freedom, from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,

And set the stars of glory there!
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light ;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle-bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land!

Majestic monarch of the cloud!

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumping loud, And see the lightning lances driven,

When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the Sun! to thee 't is given

To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high !
When speaks the signal-trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on,
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn,
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.

And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall,
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,

And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave;
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.

Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given !
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,

And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet !

Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us!

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE,

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

O SAY, can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through

the perilous fight

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting

in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was

still there;

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence

reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering

steep,

As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses ? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first

beam,

| In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream;