Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/The American Patriot's Song

The American Patriot's Song.

Hark! hear ye the sounds that the winds on their pinionsExultingly roll from the shore to the sea,With a voice that resounds through her boundless dominions?'Tis Columbia calls on her sons to be free!

Behold on yon summits where Heaven has throned her,How she starts from her proud inaccessible seat;With Nature's impregnable ramparts around her,And the cataracts thunder and foam at her feet!

In the breeze of her mountains her loose locks are shaken,While the soul-stirring notes of her warrior-songFrom the rock to the valley re-echo, "Awaken,Awaken, ye hearts that have slumbered too long!"

Yes, Despots! too long did your tyranny hold us;In a vassalage vile, ere its weakness was known;Till we learned that the links of the chain that controlled usWere forged by the fears of its captives alone.

That spell is destroyed, and no longer availing,Despised as detested—pause well ere ye dareTo cope with a people whose spirit and feelingAre roused by remembrance and steeled by despair.

Go tame the wild torrent, or stem with a strawThe proud surges that sweep o'er the strand that confines them;But presume not again to give Freemen a law,Nor think with the chains they have broken to bind them.

To hearts that the spirit of Liberty flushes,Resistance is idle—and numbers a dream;—They burst from control, as the mountain-stream rushesFrom its fetters of ice in the warmth of the beam.