University of Virginia Library

Liberty! dream of man's short eager day.
Goddess! who on the distant mountain tops
Out-shinest dawn, preluding all the light.
Vision of God: power inaccessible;
Calm is thy brow and silent are thy lips,
Spotless thy garment, and thy lifted eyes
See, over all the unequal heights of time,
A coming hour of glory and of triumph.
A light ineffable, a sacred peace,
When God's great freedom shall possess the earth,
And God's frail children stand erect and pure.
Here at thy feet, through all the flying years,
Dash the fierce surges of the world's impatience;
The tidal wave of agony and blood,
The flight and following of slave and tyrant,
The parted sea, the shore of want and death,
The futile struggle, the delayed success,
Loss, terror, anguish, and a blank despair,
That the grave heals, the dreamless grave alone.
Yet, Unattainable! thou smilest on
With heaven's high peace upon thy gracious brow,
Un-moved, un-fearing, eminent, secure,
The promise of a future yet too far:
Pledge that our dream is true, because we dream it.
Beholding thee aloft in stainless splendor,
We dare to tell what men have borne for thee,
What blood for thee was spilt, what heroes died,
Before the teller and the told were here.
Yet thou wert here: thy hand the strife impelled,
The deadly strife that saved their sacred honor,
Their children yet to come, their native land;
And made their memory a proud, sad story,
For us to treasure, worship, and attain.

Hark!
The valley slept in peace.
Over it brooded the morning star,
Shining soft in the heavens afar;
And the cornfields' rich increase,
Waved in glittering rustling blades,
The dark woods murmured in their glades
With the murmur of the dawn,
And the breath of night withdrawn,
Dropping dews from the dripping leaves,
The lapping tide on the beach that grieves,
The sudden cry of a waking bird,
The rustle and hush where a squirrel stirred,
The salt sea-breeze and the forest's balm,
Sighing softly across the calm.
Hark! on the startled ear,
A sharp short note of fear:
The waker's heart stood still,
And the watcher, with a thrill,
Waited to hear,
It was not the war-whoop's snarling yell,
Nor the sudden throb of the tocsin bell.
One stroke,—but one:
The boom of a gun:
Then, quick as leaping flame, another
Answered the other.
“Help!” they said,
In tones of dread:
“The fleet of the foe
Comes in below!”
But ere the signal sound had rolled,
Its woful warning to field and fold,
Its speech had a ready traitor told;
And another roar
From the further shore
Echoed and fell;
And still another,
Cain to his brother,
The challenging of hell!
The inland forts that heard the sound
Wandering upward and around,
Answered not to the wild dismay,
Of the startled dwellers by the bay:
No signal this that called for aid,—
Their crops were ripe and their sheaves un-made,
And none to succor or fight went down.
But all about the harbor-town
Well they knew the note of war,
When cannon thundered near and far,
And ships rode thick by the light-house bar.
Women started from their sleep,
Men sprang out to the farm-house door,
Out from the village homes they pour,
Up to the hill-top, down to the shore.
Hurrying here, and hurrying there,
For death and slaughter are in the air,
And no man's failing heart may dare
To linger behind and tend the sheep,
Nor any woman a man to keep
Back from battle with clinging prayer.
One, across the din and scare,
Shouts to her husband—
“Stop, I say!”
“Why do you call me from the way?”
“Just one word, then follow their track,
Don't come home to me shot in the back!”

Onward the ragged regiment
Like an angry wave of the harbor, went,
Bare feet bleeding, breath all spent,
But a fight for freedom was what they meant.
And now, by the blaze of the town on fire,
By the black smoke rising from the pyre
Of toil-worn treasure and heart's desire,
By thundering cannon and savage yell,
The country side knew what befel,
The town and fortresses loved so well:
And women and children fled like bees
Before the howl of a northern breeze,
Fled away from their burning hives,
Fled for their babies' precious lives,
While in the fortress on the hill,
Fathers and husbands with right good will
Fought in the fury of despair;
Sons and brothers with panting breath
Side by side rushed on to death:
Boys cheered on by their father's shout,
Pouring their fresh young life-blood out,
And up the trampled field without
With flying banners, and bayonet set,
With drum, and trumpet, and waving plume,
Steadily on like the day of doom,
Against rude bastion and parapet
The British devils their onset made,
Ranks of traitor and renegade,
Hireling Hessian and English serf,
Surging over the hill-side turf,
Soon with their hot blood to be wet,
While safe and high on Winthrop's tomb
Arnold the traitor, cursed of man,
Watched how the cruel strife began,
And laughed when the scarlet river ran,
That rose in the hearts of friend and kin,
But drowned his soul in the flood of sin.
Over against him, the fort within,
Ledyard the hero held his men
Up to their work with a grip of steel:
His land's true lover for woe or weal
Unto the death he served her then.
“Honor or life? then honor first,”
The parting word from his lips that burst,
When the cannon's call with awful stress
Thundered across his peaceful waking:
And like the day of judgment breaking
Fire, and terror, and distress
Leapt from the bosom of the night,
And filled the land with wild affright.
But hands were few if hearts were strong,
Strength and numbers will win for wrong,
And might wreck right till the world gives out:
Storming up the rough redoubt,
Over the bastion with yell and shout,
Swept the line of the conquering foe,
And the starry flag lay trampled low,
Never again its watch to keep.
Murder gleamed in the leader's face;
“Who is commander? yield your sword!”
With bending head, and courteous word,
No plea for quarter, or ruth, or grace,
The brave man offered his reddened blade:
But one quick stroke the murderer made
Sure and sharp through that noble breast,
And the hero's spirit was at rest:—
Life for honor! he loved it best.
Now with an angry tiger's leap,
The victors sprang on their helpless prey;
Right in the smiling face of day
Slaughter, rapine, and fury stood
Deep in rivers of kindred blood.
Mercy, pity, honor fled
With hidden faces before their tread;
Shrieks, and groans, and mortal cries
Shuddered up to the placid skies,
And the living held their breath,
As the dying prayed for death:
And the dead men fell away,
Face downward to the clay,
Oh day too sad and long,
Day of despair and wrong,
Drunk with death's purple wine
Poured out as a wasting flood,
Mad with the draught of blood
Were hell's insatiate brood.
The living and dead they hewed
With pitiless sword,
And taunting word,
With scoff and sneer
In the dying ear,
Till the weary day's decline,
Then with their captives and their spoil,
With drunken laughter and loud turmoil
Down to the blue and silent bay,
The conquering murderers took their way,
But on that ghastly hill,
The dead lay cold and still.
Dead! dead! but yet they speak; oh! cruel Mother,
Calling to thee with lips of living wrath,
“Curséd be he who slays his brother,
Curséd the hand that points his path.
Were we not thine? nursed on thy knees?
Cast out to tempt the wintry seas.
Here have we wrought in peace,
Here have we found release.
What had we done to these?
Mother! Medea! murderess! we are thine.”
And England's haughty heart,
Hardened in strife and mart,
Scorned the sad cry.
But widowed lives and souls in pain,
Children weeping for the slain,
Gathered up the dread refrain,—
“Oh cruel Mother! where is our brother?
Why is our father dead upon the plain?”
Alas for the former days.
For the anger and the woe
That vanished long ago,
And left for us below
Only their good and praise.
Alas for the Mother's ways!
She sowed her dragon's teeth
And quick up-sprung the spears,
The iron spears of death,
With iron hearts beneath,
And the war-storm's angry breath.
But these with blood and tears
Watered the sod for years,
And the beautiful bloom of peace,
The corn and wine's increase,
Were the harvest of their fears.
Look at these spires and towers!
These goodly fields and farms
Where never shot alarms:
At the merchant and the mariner
Whose busy toil no fear can stir,
The wide blue bay, the stately ships,
And the trailing pennon of steam that slips
In and out by the winding river:
Look at the thousand smokes that quiver
Up from this lovely land of ours,
From quiet hearths beside whose blaze
Linger long, peaceful, happy days;
They bought them with their lives,
The dead who lie around
This consecrated ground,
In these their life survives.
Give them their meed of laud and tears,
The tribute of a hundred years.
And this is history.
An echo from the cry of man,
Since first his vibrant voice began
To stir the silent vaults of air:
Up-rising here, recurring there,
Through time and space forever ringing,
Across the gulf of centuries springing,
Humanity's sad tale to bear.
In every tone the old repeat,—
“With one red blood all true hearts beat.
There is one honor and one faith,
To every knightly soul one breath,
To every hero one great death.”
It tells to-day in ardent strain,
Of patriot sires who fought in vain
Here on this green and fortressed hill,
And re-repeats the story still,
Of other, later knights, who stood
Loyal in that rebellious flood
When Lincoln called for men:
When lonely Sumter lost her flag,
And not one true man dared to lag,
But like the lover to his bride
Sprang forward to their leader's side,
Bearded the panther in its den,
And true to old ancestral pride,
Even as their fathers, fought and died,
For sacred Liberty.
And up again from the silent dead
Comes Benedict Arnold, hand and head;
Rebel chieftain to plan and plot,
Rude assassin with pistol shot;
Traitor here, and murderer there;
Or wily schemer, afraid to dare,
But quick to lay his poisonous snare,
And fire another, vile and weak,
To act the treason he dare not speak:
Deaf to the Voice which still and low
Whispers a word of dread and woe
That veils the eyes of the seraphim—
“Who hateth his brother murders him.”
These shall a smitten country send,
Down to their lives' unblessed end,
Hand in hand with him who sold
Their country's freedom for British gold:
And ages on ages yet unborn,
Point to their names with curse and scorn,
And when once more the sword of strife
Threatened and rent our country's life,
When once again for our rights we bled,
And strewed our meadows with precious dead,
Again the heart of the Mother-land
Hardened itself against our woe,
Held to greet us no friendly hand,
Aided and comforted our foe.
Unforgiving and haughty still,
To the child that thwarted her iron will.
When, oh when! shall the echo cease,
And the severed nations be bound in peace?