No refuge could save the hireling and slave Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. STARS IN MY COUNTRY'S SKY-ARE YE ALL THERE? ARE ye all there? Are ye all there, Stars in my country's sky? Are ye all there? Are ye all there, In your shining homes on high? In glorious perihelion, Amid their field of blue. I cannot count ye rightly; There's a cloud with sable rim; On white wing floating by, Then the angel touched mine eyelids, And its sable rim departed, And it fled with murky shroud. There was no missing Pleiad 'Mid all that sister race; The Southern Cross gleamed radiant forth, Then I knew it was the angel Who woke the hymning strain The diapason swelled. LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. OLD IRONSIDES. Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! And burst the cannon's roar;— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more! Her deck-once red with heroes' blood, No more shall feel the victor's tread, The harpies of the shore shall pluck Oh, better that her shattered hulk Nail to the mast her holy flag, The lightning and the gale! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. E PLURIBUS UNUM. THOUGH many and bright are the stars that appear And the stripes that are swelling in majesty there, Their light is unsullied as those in the sky And they're linked in as true and as holy a tie From the hour when those patriots fearlessly flung Ever true to themselves, to that motto they clung, By the bayonet traced at the midnight of war, Oh, perish the heart or the hand that would mar 'Mid the smoke of the conflict, the cannon's deep roar, How oft it has gathered renown! While those stars were reflected in rivers of gore, Where the cross and the lion went down; And though few were their lights in the gloom of that hour, Had God for their bulwark, and truth for their power, From where our green mountain-tops blend with the sky, To the waves where the balmy Hesperides lie, They conquered, and, dying, bequeathed to our care But that banner whose loveliness hallows the air, We are many in one while glitters a star In the blue of the heavens above, And tyrants shall quail, 'mid their dungeons afar, It shall gleam o'er the sea, 'mid the bolts of the storm, And flame where our guns with their thunder grow warm, The oppressed of the earth to that standard shall fly And the exile shall feel 'tis his own native sky, Where its stars shall wave over his head; And those stars shall increase till the fulness of time Its millions of cycles have run,— Till the world shall have welcomed their mission sublime, Though the old Alleghany may tower to heaven, And the Father of Waters divide, The links of our destiny cannot be riven While the truth of those words shall abide. Divide as we may in our own native land, Then, up with our flag!-let it stream on the air; They had hands that could strike, they had souls that could dare Up, up with that banner! where'er it may call, And a nation of freemen that moment shall fall When its stars shall be trailed on the ground. GEORGE WASHINGTON CUTTER. “BREAK OUT THE FLAG." (Written for the Y. M. C. A. at Hyde Park, Massachusetts, on raising a flag, sent up "in stops" and "broken out," after Army and Navy custom, and introducing the fight between the Constitution and Guerriere, off the New England coast, for illustration. In that fight, after the last broadside from the American frigate, the British ship took fire, and the magazine exploded as soon as her crew had been rescued.) WATCH that ball, to mast-head rising, Of a story old reminded, I see beyond the passing hour, And call that ball a sign of "power;"* Armed vessels once on neighb'ring sea They tacked and coursed with even skill, The "Sword of Solomon," in the Arabian tale, displayed upon its drawn blade the simple word "power," and made its possessor invincible. |