And the lion cubs twain sing the eagle's song:

"To be staunch, and valiant, and free, and strong!"
For the eagle's beak, and the lion's paw,
And the lion's fangs, and the eagle's claw,
And the eagle's swoop, and the lion's might,
And the lion's leap, and the eagle's sight,
Shall guard the flag with the word "Refrain!"
Now that the two are one again!

Richard Mansfield [1857-1907]

THE FLAG GOES BY

HATS off!

Along the street there comes

A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,

A flash of color beneath the sky:
Hats off!

The flag is passing by!

Blue and crimson and white it shines,
Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.

Hats off!

The colors before us fly;

But more than the flag is passing by:

Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,

Fought to make and to save the State:

Weary marches and sinking ships;

Cheers of victory on dying lips;

Days of plenty and years of peace;

March of a strong land's swift increase;

Equal justice, right and law,

Stately honor and reverend awe;

Sign of a nation, great and strong

To ward her people from foreign wrong:
Pride and glory and honor,--all

Live in the colors to stand or fall.

Hats off!

Along the street there comes

A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;

And loyal hearts are beating high:

Hats off!

The flag is passing by!

Henry Holcomb Bennett [1863

UNMANIFEST DESTINY

To what new fates, my country, far
And unforeseen of foe or friend,
Beneath what unexpected star,
Compelled to what unchosen end,

Across the sea that knows no beach
The Admiral of Nations guides
Thy blind obedient keels to reach
The harbor where thy future rides!

The guns that spoke at Lexington

Knew not that God was planning then

The trumpet word of Jefferson

To bugle forth the rights of men.

To them that wept and cursed Bull Run,
What was it but despair and shame?

Who saw behind the cloud the sun?

Who knew that God was in the flame?

Had not defeat upon defeat,
Disaster on disaster come,

The slave's emancipated feet

Had never marched behind the drum.

There is a Hand that bends our deeds
To mightier issues than we planned;
Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds,
My country, serves Its dark command.

I do not know beneath what sky
Nor on what scas shall be thy fate;
I only know it shall be high,

I only know it shall be great.

Richard Hovey [1864-1900]

ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES

STREETS of the roaring town,

Hush for him, hush, be still!

He comes, who was stricken down

Doing the word of our will.

Hush! Let him have his state.

Give him his soldier's crown,

The grists of trade can wait

Their grinding at the mill,

But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been

blown.

Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.

Toll! Let the great bells toll
Till the clashing air is dim,
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.

Toll! Let him never guess

What work we set him to.

Laurel, laurel, yes;

He did what we bade him do.

Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought

was good;

Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood.

A flag for the soldier's bier

Who dies that his land may live;

O, banners, banners here,

That he doubt not nor misgive!

That he heed not from the tomb

The evil days draw near

When the nation, robed in gloom,

With its faithless past shall strive.

Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark,

Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.

William Vaughn Moody [1869-1910]

AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION

WRITTEN AFTER SEEING AT BOSTON THE STATUE OF ROBERT GOULD SHAW, KILLED WHILE STORMING FORT WAGNER, JULY 18, 1863, AT THE HEAD OF THE FIRST ENLISTED NEGRO REGIMENT, THE 54th MASSACHUSETTS

BEFORE the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of Robert Shaw,

This bright March morn I stand,

And hear the distant spring come up the land;
Knowing that what I hear is not unheard

Of this boy soldier and his negro band,
For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,

For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.

The land they died to save from death and shame
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.

II

Through street and mall the tides of people go
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show
No hint of green; but to my listening heart
The still earth doth impart

Assurance of her jubilant emprise,

And it is clear to my long-searching eyes

That love at last has might upon the skies.
The ice is runneled on the little pond;

A telltale patter drips from off the trees;
The air is touched with southland spiceries,
As if but yesterday it tossed the frond
Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,

Or had its will among the fruits and vines
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond

Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

III

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose
Go honking northward over Tennessee;
West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie,
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,
And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young,
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,
With restless violent hands and casual tongue
Moulding her mighty fates,

The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;
And like a larger sea, the vital green

Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung
Over Dakota and the prairie states.
By desert people immemorial

On Arizonan mesas shall be done

Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice
More splendid, when the white Sierras call
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,
Unrolling rivers clear

For flutter of broad phylacteries;

While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas

That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,