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[1861]
LAY down the axe, fling by the spade; | |
| Leave in its track the toiling plough; | |
| The rifle and the bayonet-blade | |
| For arms like yours were fitter now; | |
| And let the hands that ply the pen | 5 |
| Quit the light task, and learn to wield | |
| The horseman’s crookèd brand, and rein | |
| The charger on the battle-field. | |
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| Our country calls; away! away! | |
| To where the blood-stream blots the green; | 10 |
| Strike to defend the gentlest sway | |
| That Time in all his course has seen. | |
| See, from a thousand coverts—see | |
| Spring the armed foes that haunt her track; | |
| They rush to smite her down, and we | 15 |
| Must beat the banded traitors back. | |
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| Ho! sturdy as the oaks ye cleave, | |
| And moved as soon to fear and flight, | |
| Men of the glade and forest! leave | |
| Your woodcraft for the field of fight. | 20 |
| The arms that wield the axe must pour | |
| An iron tempest on the foe; | |
| His serried ranks shall reel before | |
| The arm that lays the panther low. | |
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| And ye who breast the mountain storm | 25 |
| By grassy steep or highland lake, | |
| Come, for the land ye love, to form | |
| A bulwark that no foe can break. | |
| Stand, like your own gray cliffs that mock | |
| The whirlwind; stand in her defence: | 30 |
| The blast as soon shall move the rock, | |
| As rushing squadrons bear ye thence. | |
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| And ye whose homes are by her grand | |
| Swift rivers, rising far away, | |
| Come from the depth of her green land | 35 |
| As mighty in your march as they; | |
| As terrible as when the rains | |
| Have swelled them over bank and bourne, | |
| With sudden floods to drown the plains | |
| And sweep along the woods uptorn. | 40 |
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| And ye who throng beside the deep, | |
| Her ports and hamlets of the strand, | |
| In number like the waves that leap | |
| On his long-murmuring marge of sand, | |
| Come, like that deep, when, o’er his brim, | 45 |
| He rises, all his floods to pour, | |
| And flings the proudest barks that swim, | |
| A helpless wreck against his shore. | |
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| Few, few were they whose swords of old | |
| Won the fair land in which we dwell; | 50 |
| But we are many, we who hold | |
| The grim resolve to guard it well. | |
| Strike for that broad and goodly land, | |
| Blow after blow, till men shall see | |
| That Might and Right move hand in hand, | 55 |
| And Glorious must their triumph be. | |
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