The American Union SpeakerPhilbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
General
The American Union Speaker
Philbrick, John D. (John Dudley)
Recitations
And I saw more. When the pious offerers stole away, I saw the honored dead
half risen from their tombs, looking to the offerings, and whispering
gloomily, "Still a cypress, and still no flower of joy! Is there still the
chill of winter and the gloom of night over thee, Fatherland? Are we not
yet revenged?" And the sky of the east reddened suddenly, and quivered
with bloody flames; and from the far, far west, a lightning flashed like a
star-spangled stripe, and within its light a young eagle mounted and soared
towards the quivering flames of the east; and as he drew near, upon his
approaching, the flames changed into a radiant morning sun, and a voice
from above was heard in answer to the question of the dead:
"Sleep yet a short while; mine is the revenge. I will make the stars of the
west the sun of the east; and when ye next awake, ye will find the flower
of joy upon your cold bed." And the dead took the twig of cypress, the sign
of resurrection, into their bony hands, and lay down.
Such was the dream of my waking soul. And I prayed; and such was my prayer:
"Father, if thou deemest me worthy, take the cup from my people, and give
it in their stead to me." And there was a whisper around me like the word
"Amen." Such was my dream, half foresight and half prophecy; but resolution
all. However, none of those dead whom I saw, fell on the 15th of March.
They were victims of the royal perjury which betrayed the 15th of March.
The anniversary of our Revolution has not the stain of a single drop of
blood.
L. Kossuth.
LXXX.
THE SAME CONTINUED.
We, the elect of the nation, sat on that morning busily but quietly, in the
legislative hall of old Presburg, and, without any flood of eloquence,
passed our laws in short words, that the people shall be free; the burdens
of feudalism shall cease; the peasant shall become free proprietor; that
equality of duties, equality of rights, shall be the fundamental law; and
civil, political, social, and religious liberty shall be the common
property of all the people, whatever tongue it may speak, or in whatever
church pray; and that a national ministry shall execute these laws, and
guard with its responsibility the chartered, ancient independence of our
Fatherland.
Two days before, Austria's brave people in Vienna had broken its yoke; and
summing up despots in the person of their tool, old Metternich, drove him
away; and the Hapsburgs, trembling in their imperial cavern of imperial
crimes, trembling, but treacherous, and lying and false, wrote with
yard-long letters, the words, "Constitution" and "Free Press" upon Vienna's
walls; and the people in joy cheered the inveterate liars, because the
people knows no falsehood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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