Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude, Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood As where the rays through pictured glories pour On marble shaft and tessellated floor;-- Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels, And all is holy where devotion kneels. Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend Which holds the dust once living to defend; Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free, Each pass becomes "a new Thermopylae"! Where'er the battles of the brave are won, There every mountain "looks on Marathon"! Our fathers live; they guard in glory still The grass-grown bastions of the fortressed hill; Still ring the echoes of the trampled gorge, With _God and Freedom. England and Saint George_! The royal cipher on the captured gun Mocks the sharp night-dews and the blistering sun; The red-cross banner shades its captor's bust, Its folds still loaded with the conflict's dust; The drum, suspended by its tattered marge, Once rolled and rattled to the Hessian's charge; The stars have floated from Britannia's mast, The redcoat's trumpets blown the rebel's blast. Point to the summits where the brave have bled, Where every village claims its glorious dead; Say, when their bosoms met the bayonet's shock, Their only corselet was the rustic frock; Say, when they mustered to the gathering horn, The titled chieftain curled his lip in scorn, Yet, when their leader bade his lines advance, No musket wavered in the lion's glance; Say, when they fainted in the forced retreat, They tracked the snow-drifts with their bleeding feet, Yet still their banners, tossing in the blast, Bore Ever Ready, faithful to the last, Through storm and battle, till they waved again On Yorktown's hills and Saratoga's plain. Then, if so fierce the insatiate patriot's flame, Truth looks too pale and history seems too tame, Bid him await some new Columbiad's page, To gild the tablets of an iron age, And save his tears, which yet may fall upon Some fabled field, some fancied Washington! IV. But once again, from their AEolian cave, The winds of Genius wandered on the wave. Tired of the scenes the timid pencil drew, Sick of the notes the sounding clarion blew, Sated with heroes who had worn so long The shadowy plumage of historic song, The new-born poet left the beaten course, To track the passions to their living source.