Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/325

Rh And comes no warm approving
 * From Mammon’s crowded mart?

Still let the land be shaken
 * By a summons of thine own!

By all save truth forsaken,
 * Stand fast with that alone!

Shrink not from strife unequal!
 * With the best is always hope;

And ever in the sequel
 * God holds the right side up!

But when, with thine uniting,
 * Come voices long and loud,

And far-off hills are writing
 * Thy fire-words on the cloud;

When from Penobscot’s fountains
 * A deep response is heard,

And across the Western mountains
 * Rolls back thy rallying word;

Shall thy line of battle falter,
 * With its allies just in view?

Oh, by hearth and holy altar,
 * My fatherland, be true!

Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom!
 * Speed them onward far and fast!

Over hill and valley speed them,
 * Like the sibyl’s on the blast!

Lo! the Empire State is shaking
 * The shackles from her hand;

With the rugged North is waking
 * The level sunset land!

On they come, the free battalions!
 * East and West and North they come,

And the heart-beat of the millions
 * Is the beat of Freedom’s drum.

To the tyrant’s plot no favor!
 * No heed to place-fed knaves!

Bar and bolt the door forever
 * Against the land of slaves!”

Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,
 * The heavens above us spread!

The land is roused,—its spirit
 * Was sleeping, but not dead!

again the stately emblem on the Bay State’s rusted shield, Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner’s tattered field. Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England’s royal missive with a firm, “Thus saith the Lord!” Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array! What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.