Fifty of the Protestant Ballads :: :: University of Virginia Library

There is more yet against us,—if one may speak out
Frankly and faithfully, fearless of man,—
For human infirmities hover about
To set what we will hard against what we can;

As thus;—that we Protestants, ever too prone
To fight single-handed with falsehood and wrong,
Forget that each twig is but weakness alone,
Whereas the whole faggoted bundle were strong.

Our foes are united, a phalanx compact,
Papists and infidels, equal in hate,
Acute and agreed on each treacherous act
That helps to dissever the Church from the State;
Well knowing, ill hoping, that through this free land,
If Protestant faith be disarmed of defence,
The Throne too must fall, and old Popery stand
Tyrant of England not many days hence!

O! can it be truth that the Protestant's Name
Is quite out of fashion, unpopular now,
Since sundry false brethren have spotted with shame
The fillet which martyrdom wore on its brow?
O pastors! O people! awake and arise!
Be zealous for England's Religion and Laws,
Rememb'ring, unless all her history lies,
That—Liberty stands with the Protestant Cause!

For we, disunited through treachery's sin,
May possibly fall as Jerusalem fell,
Where the foeman without and the false-man within
Combined for her ruin too weakly, too well!
Alas for those traitors, our Church's choice sons,
Her Rome-stricken clergy, her priest-bitten lay,—
Alas! they have welcomed, degenerate ones,
Both sorrow and shame to their country to-day!

And this is our sin! that so slowly we rise,
Gallios caring for none of these things,—
With an island-contempt in the heart and the eyes,
The tolerant scorn that from indolence springs;
But the curse upon Meroz, who help'd not the Lord
When the sword of the mighty flash'd fierce against Him,
May bitterly—justly—in judgment be pour'd
On zeal grown so cold, on a lamp shown so dim!

That omen be absent! Let each of us now
Live stoutly for truths wherein martyrs have died,—
Let “union and zeal” be the Protestant vow,
The motto for all upon Liberty's side;
As in days long-ago of the red rose or white,
With conscience and duty together we'll stand
For the Crown and the Creed of our fathers to fight,
And rescue from traitors this Protestant land!