COLUMBIA COMES
Permission of the author
In war's fast deepening shades Columbia stood
And watched Democracy's descending star.
She heard with pity Belgium's dying cry,
Whose rape by Germany made Satan blush.
When her own children died by German blasts
While in their merchant ships on lawful seas,
Columbia felt the rub of future chains,
And saw Death write with steel his awful name
Across the flags of all her cherished kin.
Then Liberty's bright torch lit well her path,
At whose far-distant end is destiny;
She saw her Lincoln keeping anxious watch.
And now, the troops of seventeen seventy-six,
In battle cry, are charging in her soul.
Presumptuous Germany! to make a foe
Of her whose birth was of throne-shaking war
That threw the Western walls of Empire down;
Who first hitched lightning to her spacious car
And in it pioneered the undersea;
Who saddled first the untamed steeds of air
And rode them at her will through lofty heavens;
Whose tireless mind still cleaves new seas of thought;
Whose fearless feet still march to Freedom's drums.
