Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/44

IN WAR TIME Her eyes are fixed on crimsoned flags:

But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys?

Do you hear them say that the patriot fire

Burns on her altars too pure and bright,

To the darkened heavens leaping higher,

Though drenched with the blood of every fight;

That in the light of its searching flame

Treason and tyrants stand revealed,

And the yielding craven is put to shame,

On Capitol floor or foughten field?

Do you hear the hissing voice, which saith

That she—who bore through all the land

The lyre of Freedom, the torch of Faith,

And young Invention's mystic wand—

Should gather her skirts and dwell apart,

With not one of her sisters to share her fate,—

A Hagar, wandering sick at heart;

A pariah, bearing the Nation's hate?

Sons, who have peopled the distant West,

And planted the Pilgrim vine anew,

Where, by a richer soil carest,

It grows as ever its parent grew,

Say, do you hear,—while the very bells

Of your churches ring with her ancient voice,

And the song of your children sweetly tells

How true was the land of your fathers' choice,—

Do you hear the traitors who bid you speak

The word that shall sever the sacred tie?

And ye, who dwell by the golden Peak,

Has the subtle whisper glided by?

Has it crost the immemorial plains,

To coasts where the gray Pacific roars 14