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I MEN say, Columbia, we shall hear thy guns. | |
| But in what tongue shall be thy battle-cry? | |
| Not that our sires did love in years gone by, | |
| When all the Pilgrim Fathers were little sons | |
| In merry homes of England? Back, and see | 5 |
| Thy satchell’d ancestor! Behold, he runs | |
| To mine, and, clasp’d, they tread the equal lea | |
| To the same village-school, where side by side | |
| They spell ‘Our Father’. Hard by, the twin-pride | |
| Of that grey hall whose ancient oriel gleams | 10 |
| Thro’ yon baronial pines, with looks of light | |
| Our sister-mothers sit beneath one tree. | |
| Meanwhile our Shakespeare wanders past and dreams | |
| His Helena and Hermia. Shall we fight? | |
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II NOR force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye | 15 |
| Who north or south, on east or western land, | |
| Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth, | |
| Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God | |
| For God; Oh ye who in eternal youth | |
| Speak with a living and creative flood | 20 |
| This universal English, and do stand | |
| Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand | |
| Heroic utterance—parted, yet a whole, | |
| Far, yet unsever’d,—children brave and free | |
| Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be | 25 |
| Lords of an Empire wide as Shakespeare’s soul, | |
| Sublime as Milton’s immemorial theme, | |
| And rich as Chaucer’s speech, and fair as Spenser’s dream. | |
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