| |
(Excerpt)
FROM Yorktown’s ruins, ranked and still, | |
| Two lines stretch far o’er vale and hill: | |
| Who curbs his steed at head of one? | |
| Hark! the low murmur: Washington! | |
| Who bends his keen, approving glance | 5 |
| Where down the gorgeous line of France | |
| Shine knightly star and plume of snow? | |
| Thou too art victor, Rochambeau! | |
| |
| The earth which bears this calm array | |
| Shook with the war-charger yesterday, | 10 |
| Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel, | |
| Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel; | |
| October’s clear and noonday sun | |
| Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun, | |
| And down night’s double blackness fell, | 15 |
| Like a dropped star, the blazing shell. | |
| |
| Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines | |
| Stand moveless as the neighboring pines; | |
| While through them, sullen, grim, and slow, | |
| The conquered hosts of England go: | 20 |
| O’Hara’s brow belies his dress, | |
| Gay Tarleton’s troop rides bannerless: | |
| Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes, | |
| Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes! | |
| |
| Nor thou alone: with one glad voice | 25 |
| Let all thy sister States rejoice; | |
| Let Freedom, in whatever clime | |
| She waits with sleepless eye her time, | |
| Shouting from cave and mountain wood | |
| Make glad her desert solitude, | 30 |
| While they who hunt her quail with fear; | |
| The New World’s chain lies broken here! * * * * * | |
| |
