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 | The poetical works of Edward Rowland Sill |  |
Out of the wrinkled bosom of the Old,
New England once was born; a rock-hewn race,
Puritan pilgrims, splendidly pure and grim.
Flint-set against all sham, they rose to say
'T was sunrise and the ghosts must vanish now
Before the living Fact: that a king's crowned head
Was but a man's head, and it must come off
Like any beggar's, when it wrought a wrong.
They freed society, the individual man
We must emancipate; they stripped all masks,
And knocked the fool's-caps off the venerable heads
Of church and state, and tore their pompous robes
To strings for children to fly kites with.
New England once was born; a rock-hewn race,
Puritan pilgrims, splendidly pure and grim.
Flint-set against all sham, they rose to say
'T was sunrise and the ghosts must vanish now
Before the living Fact: that a king's crowned head
Was but a man's head, and it must come off
Like any beggar's, when it wrought a wrong.
They freed society, the individual man
We must emancipate; they stripped all masks,
And knocked the fool's-caps off the venerable heads
Of church and state, and tore their pompous robes
To strings for children to fly kites with.
| The poetical works of Edward Rowland Sill | |