Thy sacul leaves, Jan Fardon fower, Float Shall ever on dame and terver To all their heavenly Colors Tue Dr. Hackening frost or crimson duw, And God love is as we love thee, Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! Then hail the banner of the feel, The starry Flower of Liberty ! CHILD MEMORIAL LIBRARY Olion Wendell Homes POEMS OF PATRIOTISM AND FREEDOM. BREATHES THERE THE MAN BREATHES there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. SIR WALTER SCOTT. MY COUNTRY. THERE is a land, of every land the pride, In the clear heaven of her delightful eye, Art thou a man? a patriot ? — look around; Man, through all ages of revolving time, Unchanging man, in every varying clime, Deems his own land of every land the pride, Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside; His home the spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest. JAMES MONTGOMERY. HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blessed! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung; WILLIAM COLLINS. THE BRAVE AT HOME. I. THE maid who binds her warrior's sash Though Heaven alone records the tear, As e'er bedewed the field of glory! II. The wife who girds her husband's sword, What though her heart be rent asunder, The bolts of death around him rattle, Hath shed as sacred blood as e'er Was poured upon the field of battle! III. The mother who conceals her grief While to her breast her son she presses, Then breathes a few brave words and brief, Kissing the patriot brow she blesses, With no one but her secret God To know the pain that weighs upon her, Received on Freedom's field of honor! THE DEATH OF LEONIDAS. A host glared on the hill; a host glared by the bay; But the Greeks rushed onward still, like leopards in their play. The air was all a yell, and the earth was all a flame, Where the Spartan's bloody steel on the silken turbans came; And still the Greek rushed on where the fiery torrent rolled, Till like a rising sun shone Xerxes' tent of gold. They found a royal feast, his midnight banquet, And the treasures of the East lay beneath the Then sat to the repast the bravest of the brave! Up rose the glorious rank, to Greece one cup poured high, Then hand in hand they drank, "To immortality!" Fear on King Xerxes fell, when, like spirits from the tomb, With shout and trumpet knell, he saw the warriors come. But down swept all his power, with chariot and with charge; a storm was on the Down poured the arrows' shower, till sank the Spartan targe. IT was the wild midnight, - The torrent swept the glen, the ocean lashed the Then rose the Spartan men, to make their bed in gore! Swift from the deluged ground three hundred took the shield; Then, in silence, gathered round the leader of the field! All up the mountain's side, all down the woody vale, All by the rolling tide waved the Persian banners pale. And foremost from the pass, among the slumbering band, Sprang King Leonidas, like the lightning's living brand. Then double darkness fell, and the forest ceased its moan; But there came a clash of steel, and a distant dy- Anon, a trumpet blew, and a fiery sheet burst high, |