The officer gazed on princely brow, where valor and genius shone,

And upon that fallen pine, his vow, went up to his Maker's throne,

I will draw no sword against men like these, it would drop from a nerveless hand, And the very blood in my heart would freeze, if I faced such a Spartan band.

From Marion's camp, with a saddened mien, he hastened with awe away,
The sons of Anak, his eyes had seen, and a giant race were they.

No more on the tented field was he, and rich was the truth he learned,

That men who could starve for Liberty, can neither be crushed, nor spurned.

XIV. SONG OF MARION'S MEN.

W. C. BRYANT.

OUR band is few, but true and tried, And they who stand to face us

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XV.-DISUNION.

ALBERT PIKE.

Y, shout! 'Tis the day of your pride,
Ye despots and tyrants of earth!

Tell your serfs the American name to deride,
And to rattle their fetters in mirth;

Ay, shout! for the league of the free

Is about to be shivered to dust,

And the rent limbs to fall from the vigorous tree,
Where Liberty put her firm trust;

Shout! shout! for more firmly established will be
Your thrones and dominions beyond the blue sea.

Laugh on for such folly supreme

The world had yet never beheld;

And ages to come will the history deem
A tale by antiquity swelled;

For nothing that time has upbuilt

And set in the annals of crime,

So stupid and senseless, so wretched in guilt,
Darkens sober tradition or rhyme.

It will be, like the fable of Eblis's fall,
A byword of mocking and horror to all.

The mad, who would raze out your name
From the league of the proud and the free,
And a pitiful separate sovereignty claim,
Like a lone wave flung off from the sea;
Oh, pause ere you plunge in the chasm
That yawns in your traitorous way!

Ere Freedom, convulsed with one terrible spasm,
Desert you forever and ay!

Pause! think ere the earthquake astonish your soul,
And the thunders of war through your green valleys roll.

Good God! what a title, what name

Will history give to your crime!

In the deepest abyss of dishonor and shame,
Ye will writhe till the last hour of time,
As braggarts who forged their own chains,
Pulled down what their brave fathers built,

And tainted the blood in their children's young veins
With the poison of slavery and guilt;

And Freedom's bright heart be hereafter tenfold For your folly and fall, more discouraged and cold.

What flag shall float over the fires,

And the smoke of your parricide war,

Instead of the Stars and broad Stripes of your sires? A lone, pale, dim, flickering star,

With a thunder-cloud vailing its glow

As it faints away into the sea ;

Will the Eagle's wing shelter and shield you? ah no! His wing shelters only the free.

Miscall it, disguise it, boast, rant as you will

You are traitors, misled by your mad leaders still.

Turn, turn then! Cast down in your might

The pilots that sit at the helm,

Steer, steer your proud ship from the gulf which dark night,

And treason and fear overwhelm !

Turn back from your mountains and glens
From your swamps, from the rivers and sea,
From forest and precipice, cavern and den
Where your brave fathers bled to be free.

From the graves where those glorious patriots lie
Re-echoes the warning, "Turn back, or ye die !''

XVI. THE PALMETTO AND THE PINE.

MRS. VIRGINIA L. FRENCH.

HEY planted them together- our gallant sires of old—

Though one was crowned with crystal snow, and one with solar gold. The planted them together,—on the world's majestic height;

At Saratoga's deathless charge; at Eutaw's stubborn fight;

At midnight on the dark redoubt, 'mid plunging shot and shell;
At noontide, gasping in the crush of battle's bloody swell.
With gory hands and reeking brows, amid the mighty fray
When they planted Independence as a symbol and a sign,
They struck deep soil, and planted the Palmetto and the Pine.

They planted them together,-by the river of the years,

Watered with our fathers' hearts' blood, watered with our mother's tears; In the strong, rich soil of Freedom, with a bounteous benison

From their prophet, priest, and pioneer-our father, Washington!

Above them floated echoes of the ruin and the wreck,

Like "drums that beat at Louisburg and thundered at Quebec ;"
But the old lights sank in darkness as the new stars rose to shine
O'er those emblems of the sections, the Palmetto and the Pine.

And we'll plant them still together, for 'tis yet the self-same soil
Our fathers' valor won for us by victory and toil

On Florida's fair everglades, by bold Ontario's flood,

And thro' them send electric life, as leaps the kindred blood!

For thus it is they taught us who for Freedom lived and died,—

The Eternal's law of justice must and shail be justified,

That God has joined together, by a fiat all divine,

The destinies of dwellers 'neath the Palmetto and the Pine.

God plant them still together! They have flourished side by side
In the halls of our Centennial, mailed in more than marble pride!
With kindly deeds and noble names we'll grave them o'er and o'er
With brave historic legends of the glorious days of yore;
While the clear, exultant chorus, rising from united bands,
The echo of our triumph peals to earth's remotest-lands;
While "Faith, Fraternity, and Love" shall joyfully entwine
Around our chosen emblems, the Palmetto and the Pine.

"Together!" shouts Niagara, his thunder-toned decree; Together!" echo back the waves upon the Mexic sea;

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Together!" sing the sylvan hills where old Atlantic roars;
Together!'' boom the breakers on the wild Pecific shores;
"Together cry the people. And "together', it shall be
An everlasting charter-bond forever for the free!

Of liberty the signet-seal, the one eternal sign,
Be whose united emblems-the Palmetto and the Pine.

XVII.-PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

LONGFELLOW.

ISTEN, my friends, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere : on the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five: ah! not a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend: "If the British march by land or sea, from the town to-night, hang a lantern aloft, in the belfry arch of the North Church Tower, as a signal light one if by land, and two if by sea and I on the opposite shore will be, ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm, for the country folk to be up, and to arm!" Then he said " Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar silently rowed to the Charleston shore; just as the moon rose over the Bay, where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay the "Somerset, British man-of-war; phantom-ship, with each mast and spar across the moon like a prisonbar; and a huge black bulk, that was magnified by its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, wanders and watches with eager ears, till, in the silence around him, he hears the muster of men at the barrack door; the sound of arms-and the tramp of feet--and the measured tread of the grenadiers marching down to their boats on the shore? Then he climbed to the Tower of the Church, up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, to the belfrychamber overhead; and startled the pigeons from their pearch on the sombre rafters, that round him made masses, and moving shapes of shade up the trembling ladder, steep and tall, to the highest window in the wall,--where he paused to listen and look down a moment on the roof of the town, and the moonlight flowing over all! Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead in their night-encampment on the hill; wrapped in silence so deep and still that he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, the watchful night-wind as it went creeping along from tent to tent, and seeming to whisper, "All is well!" A moment only he feels the spell of the place' and the hour, and the secret dread of the lonely belfry and the dead; for, suddenly, all his thoughts are bent on a shadowy something far away, where the river widens to meet the bay—a line of black bends and floats on the rising tide . . . like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, booted and spurred, with a heavy stride on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now, he patted his horse's side; now, gazed at the landscape far and near: then impetuous, stamped the earth, and turned and tightened his saddle-girth; but mostly he watched with eager search the belfry-tower of the Old North Church, as rose above the graves on the hill, lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still; and lo! as he looks on the belfry's height, a glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns-but lingers and gazes; till full on his sight, a second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in the village street- -a shape in the moonlight-a bulk in the dark—and, beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet; that was all! and yet, through the gloom and the light, the fate of a Nation was riding that night; and the spark struck out by that steed in his flight, kindled the land into flame with its heat. It was TWELVE by the village clock when he cross'd the bridge into Medford-town: he heard the crowing of the cock, and the barking of the farmer's dog, and felt the damp of the river-fog that rises after the sun goes down. It was ONE by the village clock, when he galloped into Lexington; he saw the gilded weathercock swim in the moonlight as he pass'd, and the Meeting-house windows blank and bare, gaze at him with a spectral glare, as if they already stood aghast at the bloody work they would look upon.

It was Two by the village clock, when he came to the bridge in Con

cord-town: he heard the bleating of the flock, and the twitter of birds among the trees, and felt the breath of the morning breeze, blowing over the meadows brown. —And one was safe and asleep in his bed, who at the bridge would be first to fall —who, that day, would be lying dead, pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read, how the British Regulars fired and fled-how the farmers gave them ball for ball from behind each fence and farmyard wall, chasing the red-coats down the lane; then crossing the fields to emerge again under the trees at the turn of the road, and only pausing to fire and load!

So through the night rode Paul Revere; and so through the night went his cry of alarm to every Middlesex village and farm :-"For freedom and fireside! Arm! arm! arm!"- -A cry of defiance, and not of fear; a voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, and a word that shall echo for evermore! for, borne on the night-wind of the Past, through American history to the last, in the hour of darkness, and peril, and need, the people will waken and listen-to hear the hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, and the midnight message of Paul Revere !

I

XVIII. THE AMERICAN EAGLE.

BUILD my nest on the mountain's crest,

Where the wild winds rock my eaglets to rest,
Where the lightnings flash and the thunders crash,
And the foaming torrents roar and dash;

For my spirit free henceforth shall be

A type for the sons of Liberty.

Aloft I fly from my eyrie high,

Through the vaulted dome of the azure sky,

On a sunbeam bright take my airy flight,

And float in a flood of liquid light;

For I love to play in the noon-tide ray,

And bask in a blaze from the throne of day.

Away I spring with a tireless wing,

On a feathery cloud I poise and swing,

I dart down the steep where the lightnings leap,
And the clear blue canopy slowly sweep;
For dear to me is the revelry

Of a free and fearless liberty.

I love the land where the mountains stand
Like the watch-towers high of a patriot band,
For I may not bide in my glory and pride,
Though the land be never so fair and wide,
Where luxury reigns o'er voluptuous plains. .
And fetters the free-born soul in chains.

Then give to me in my flights to see
The land of the Pilgrims ever free!

And I never will rove from the haunts I love,

But watch, from my sentinel track above,

Your banner free, o'er land and sea,
And exult in your glorious liberty.