Phantasmion :: :: University of Virginia Library

Their looks are wild and savage!
With deeds of night
They have darken'd the light,
They are come from reckless ravage!
O bountiful Earth,
With famine and dearth,
With plague and fire surround them;
Thy womb they have torn
With impious scorn;
Let its tremblings now confound them!
Our cause maintain,
For as dew to the plain,
Or wind to the slumbering sea,
Or sunny sheen
To woodlands green,
So dear have we been to thee.

The new-blown flowers,
From thy fairest bowers,
Their rifling hands have taken;
And the tree's last crop,
That was ready to drop,
From the boughs have rudely shaken;
Through deep green dells,
Where the bright stream wells,
Like diamond with emerald blending;
Through shelter'd vales,
Where the light wind sails,
High cedars scarcely bending;
Through lawn and grove,
Where the wild deer rove,
They have rush'd like a burning flood:
For morning's beam,
Or the starry gleam,
Came fire, and sword, and blood.

Then lend us thy might,
Great Earth, for the fight,

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O help us to quell their pride:
Make our sinews and bones
As firm as the stones,
And metals that gird thy side;
May the smould'ring mountains,
And fiery fountains
Inflame our vengeful ire,
And beasts that lurk
In thy forests murk,
Their tameless rage inspire;
While from caves of death
Let a sluggish breath
O'er the spoilers' spirits creep;
O send to their veins
The chill that reigns
In thy channels dark and deep.

But if those we abhor
Must triumph in war,
Let us sink to thy inmost centre,
Where the trump's loud sound,
Nor the tramp and the bound,
Nor the conqueror's shout can enter;
Let mountainous rocks,
By earthquake shocks,
High o'er our bones be lifted;
And piles of snow,
Where we sleep below,
To the plains above be drifted;
If the murderous band
Must dwell in the land,
And the fields we loved to cherish,
From the land of balm
Let cedar and palm
With those that rear'd them perish.