Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (1773–1811)

BLESS’D on his own paternal farm,

Contented, yet acquiring;

Below ambition’s gilded charm,

Yet rich beyond desiring;—

The hill-born rustic, hale and gay,

Ere prattling swallows sally,

Or ere the pine-top spies the day,

Sings cheerly through his valley.

Green Mountains, echo Heaven’s decree!

Live, Virtue, Law, and Liberty.

With love, and plenty, peace, and health,

Enrich’d by honest labour,

He cheers the friend of humbler wealth,

Nor courts his prouder neighbour;

At eve, returning home, he meets

His nut-brown lass, so loving;

And still his constant strain repeats,

Through groves and meadows roving,
Green Mountains, &c.

Should faction’s wily serpent spring,

With treacherous folds to entwine him,

Undaunted by his venom’d sting,

To flames he would consign him.

The hardy yeoman, like the oak

That shades his woodland border,

Would baffle Anarch’s vengeful stroke,

To shelter law and order.
Green Mountains, &c.

Should hostile fleets our shores assail,

By home-bred traitors aided,

No free-born hand would till the vale

By slavery degraded;

Each heart would join the patriot brave,

To die proud Freedom’s martyr,

And shed its latest drop to save

His country’s glorious charter.

Green Mountains’ echo then would be,

Fight on, fight on, for Liberty!