Then, staggered by the shot, he saw their serried columns reel, And fall, as falls the bearded rye beneath the reaper's steel; And then arose a mighty shout that might have waked the dead,-- "Hurrah! they run! the field is won! Hurrah! the foe is fled!" And every man hath dropped his gun to clutch a neighbor's hand, As his heart kept praying all the while for home and native land.
Thrice on that day we stood the shock of thrice a thousand foes, And thrice that day within our lines the shout of victory rose; And though our swift fire slackened then, and, reddening in the skies, We saw from Charlestown's roofs and walls the flamy columns rise, Yet while we had a cartridge left, we still maintained the fight, Nor gained the foe one foot of ground upon that blood-stained height.
What though for us no laurels bloom, and o'er the nameless brave No sculptured trophy, scroll, nor hatch records a warrior grave! What though the day to us was lost!--upon that deathless page The everlasting charter stands for every land and age!
For man hath broke his felon bonds, and cast them in the dust, And claimed his heritage divine, and justified the trust; While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour, O'er every nation, race and clime, on every sea and shore, Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when, mid the darkest skies, He saw above a ruined world the Bow of Promise rise.
We squander health in search of wealth; We scheme and toil and save; Then squander wealth in search of health, But only find a grave. We live, and boast of what we own; We die, and only get a stone.
It may be that the words I spoke To cheer him on his way, To him were vain, but I myself Was braver all that day.
Billy's dead, and gone to glory--so is Billy's sister Nell: There's a tale I know about them, were I poet I would tell; Soft it comes, with perfume laden, like a breath of country air Wafted down the filthy alley, bringing fragrant odors there.
In that vile and filthy alley, long ago one winter's day, Dying quick of want and fever, hapless, patient Billy lay, While beside him sat his sister, in the garret's dismal gloom, Cheering with her gentle presence Billy's pathway to the tomb.
Many a tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child, Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled; Tales herself had heard haphazard, caught amid the Babel roar, Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round their mothers' door.