They came to conquer or to fall,
Where he who conquered, he who fell,
Was deemed a dead, or living, Tell!

5

And now the work of life and death
Hung on the passing of a breath;
The fire of conflict burned within;
The battle trembled to begin;

Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
Point for attack was nowhere found;
Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed,
The unbroken line of lances blazed;
That line 't were suicide to meet,
And perish at their tyrants' feet;
How could they rest within their graves,
And leave their homes the homes of slaves?
Would they not feel their children tread
With clanking chains above their head?

6

It must not be: this day, this hour,
Annihilates the oppressor's power;
All Switzerland is in the field,
She will not fly, she can not yield;
She must not fall; her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.
Few were the numbers she could boast,

But

every freeman was a host,

And felt as though himself were he
On whose sole arm hung victory.

7

It did depend on one, indeed:
Behold him! Arnold Winkelried!

There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.
Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
In rumination deep and long,

Till you might see, with sudden grace,
The very thought come o'er his face;
And by the motion of his form,
Anticipate the bursting storm;
And by the uplifting of his brow,

Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.
But 't was no sooner thought than done;
The field was in a moment won.

8

"Make way for Liberty!" he cried:
Then ran, with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp;
Ten spears he swept within his grasp:
"Make way for Liberty!" he cried,
Their keen points met from side to side;
He bowed amongst them like a tree,
And thus made way for Liberty.

9

Swift to the breach his comrades fly;
"Make way for Liberty !" they cry,
And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart;
While instantaneous as his fall,

Rout, ruin, panic, scattered all.

An earthquake could not overthrow
A city with a surer blow.

10

Thus Switzerland again was free,

Thus Death made way for Liberty!

-James Montgomery.

Compare Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade (page 11), and the story of Thermopyla.

THE RISING IN 1776

The Rising is based upon the following incident: The pastor of the Lutheran church at Woodstock, in the Valley of Virginia, at the beginning of the American Revolution was John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, who had settled there in 1772. On the Sunday following the receipt of the news of the battle of Lexington and

Concord he went into his pulpit wearing the full uniform of a colonel, but completely covered by his clerical gown. The sermon was a stirring one, in which he said there was a time to preach and a time to fight, and that the time to fight had come. Then he threw off his gown, read his commission as colonel, ordered the buglers and the drummers, whom he had stationed outside of the church, to sound the call to arms, and asked his congregation how many of them would volunteer. Many of them did so, and joined his regiment, the Eighth Virginia, afterward noted for its courage and good discipline. This regiment, led by the fighting preacher, participated in many important battles. Muhlenberg was made brigadier general, and major general at the close of the war. After the war he returned to his native state of Pennsylvania, served three terms in Congress, was elected to the United States Senate, was supervisor of revenues for the state, and held other offices.

The first four stanzas of the poem tell of the effect of the news from Lexington and Concord upon the people in the Valley of Virginia, and the rest of the poem is a free account of the occurrence mentioned above. Which Berkeley is referred to in verse nine is not clear, for Governor Berkeley, who might have uttered just such a sentiment, had been dead for a long time. Doubtless that incident is an embellishment introduced by the poet.

THE RISING IN 1776

1

Out of the North the wild news came,
Far flashing on its wings of flame,
Swift as the boreal light which flies
At midnight through the startled skies.

2

And there was tumult in the air,

The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat, And through the wide land everywhere The answering tread of hurrying feet; While the first oath of Freedom's gun Came on the blast from Lexington; And Concord roused, no longer tame, Forgot her old baptismal name, Made bare her patriot arm of power, And swelled the discord of the hour.

3

Within its shade of elm and oak

The church of Berkeley Manor stood; There Sunday found the rural folk,

And some esteemed of gentle blood. In vain their feet with loitering tread Passed 'mid the graves where rank is naught; All could not read the lesson taught

In that republic of the dead.