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PART III.

OUR FATHERS AND THEIR HOMES.

1. OLD ENGLAND.

NURSE of the Pilgrim sires who sought,

Beyond th' Atlantic's foam,

For fearless truth and honest thought

A refuge and a home,

Who would not be of them or thee
A not unworthy son,

That hears amid the chained or free
The name of Washington?

Cradle of Shakspeare, Milton, Knox,
King-shaming Cromwell's throne,
Home of the Russells, Watts, and Lockes,1
Earth's greatest are thine own;
And shall thy children forge base chains
For men that would be free?

No! by the Eliots, Hampdens, Vanes,
Pyms, Sydneys, yet to be.

No for the blood which kings have gorged
Hath made their victims wise;

While every lie that Fraud hath forged
Veils wisdom from his eyes;

But time shall change the despot's mood;
And mind is mightier now than then,
When turning evil into good,

And monsters into men.

1 Eminent friends of liberty. See Vocabulary.

If round the soul the chains are bound
That hold the world in thrall;
If tyrants laugh when men are found
In brutal fray to fall;

Lord, let not Britain arm her hands
Her sister States to ban,

But bless through her all other States,
The family of man !

For freedom if thy Hampden fought;
For peace if Falkland fell ;

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For peace and love if Bentham wrote,
And Burns sang wildly well;
Let Knowledge, strongest of the strong,
Bid Hate and Discord cease;
Be this the burden of my song,
Love, Liberty, and Peace.

EBENEZER ELIOT.

2. ERIN AND THE DAYS OF OLD.

MALACHI, monarch of Ireland in the tenth century, is reported to have taken a gold collar from the neck of a Danish champion of an invading army. At that time the Red Knights flourished, claiming to have occupied Ulster before the time of Christ. The round towers referred to by the poet still remain, scattered through Ireland; and according to ancient legends, the waters of Lough Neagh, once a fountain, revealed other towers when the waters were placid.

LET Erin remember the days of old,
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her ;
When Malachi wore the collar of gold
Which he won from her proud invader;

When her kings, with standard of green unfurled,
Led the Red Branch knights to danger;

Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of the stranger.

On Lough Neagh's banks, as the fisherman strays
When the clear cold eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining;
Thus shall memory often in dream sublime
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over;
Thus, sighing, look through the waves of time,
For the long faded glories they cover.

THOMAS MOORE.

3. OUR RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND.

WHAT reflecting American does not acknowledge the incalculable advantages derived to this land out of the deep foundations of civil, moral, and intellectual truth from which we have drawn in England? What American does not feel proud that his fathers were the countrymen of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke? Who does not know that every pulse of civil liberty in the heart of our ancestors, the sobriety, the firmness, and the dignity with which the cause of free principles came into existence here, constantly found encouragement from the friends of Liberty there? For myself, I can truly say that, after my native land, I feel a strong reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we sprang. The sound of my native language beyond the sea is a music to my ears beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or Castilian majesty. I tread with reverence the spots where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers. The pleasant land of their birth has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, yea, a holy land; rich in the memory of the great and the good, the champions and the martyrs of Liberty, the exiled heralds of truth, and

richer, as the parent of this land of promise in the

west.

I am not the panegyrist of England. I am not dazed by her riches, nor awed by her power. Nor is my admiration awakened by her armies, mustered for the battles of Europe; her navies overshadowing the ocean; nor her empire grasping the farthest East. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are too often maintained, which are the causes why no friend of Liberty can salute her with undivided affections. But it is the cradle and the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles through which it has passed; the tombs of those who have reflected honor upon all who speak the English language; the birthplace of our fathers; the home of the Pilgrims, it is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American, it would seem to me degenerate and unthankful to hang with rapture and passion upon the traces of Homer and Virgil, and follow, without emotion, the nearer and plainer footsteps of Shakspeare and Milton. I should think him cold in his love for his native land, who felt no melting in his heart for that other native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers.

EDWARD EVERETT.

4. NEW ENGLAND.

HAIL to the land whereon we tread,
Our fondest boast;

The sepulchre of mighty dead,

The truest hearts that ever bled,

Who sleep on glory's brightest bed,

A fearless host!

No slave is here, -our unchained feet
Walk freely as the waves that beat
Our coast.

Our fathers crossed the ocean's wave
To reach this shore,

They left behind the coward slave,
To welter in his living grave;
With hearts unbent and spirits brave,
They sternly bore

Such toils as meaner souls had quelled;
But souls like these, such toils impelled
To soar.

Hail to the morn when first they stood
On Bunker's height,

And, fearless, stemmed the invading flood,
And wrote our dearest rights in blood,

And mowed in ranks the hireling brood,

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