Aux fils des preux! On! soldiers, on! And triumph swell our battle-song! "Aux fils des preux!' י THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM. ROBERT SOUTHEY. It was a summer's evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, He came to ask what he had found, Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And with a natural sigh, "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory! "I find them in the garden, For there's many hereabout; And often when I go to plough The ploughshare turns them out; For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory!' "Now, tell us what 'twas all about," "It was the English," Kaspar cried, 66 My father lived at Blenheim then, They burned his dwelling to the ground, So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide; And many a childing mother then And new-born baby died. But things like that, you know, must be "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun. But things like that, you know, must be "Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won, And our good Prince Eugene." "Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!" 66 Said little Wilhelmine. Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory! "And everybody praised the Duke "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. O! SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming; Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses ? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam; Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream : 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is the band who so vauntingly swore 'Mid the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country they'd leave us no more Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution; No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between our loved home and the war's desolation ; Bless'd with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, Before the iron sleet that day- Now here, now there, the shot, it hailed Yet not a single soldier quailed When wounded comrades round them wailed And on- still on our column kept Through walls of flame its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, The slippery streets of Monterey. |