Ye sons of old Neptune, whose spirits of steel
In tempests were hardened, by peril were tempered,
Whose limbs, whose limbs like the wild winds that sweep the bare keel,
By fetters of tyrants shall never be hamper’d;
’Mid the storm and the flood
Still your honors shall bud,
And bloom with fresh fragrance though nurtured with blood;
For the tars of Columbia are lords of the wave,
And have sworn that the ocean’s their throne or their grave!
The chiefs who our freedom sustain’d on the land