As at Thermopylæ,
Grecian child of liberty;
Swears to despot ne'er to yield--
Here, by our glorious dead,
Let's revenge the blood they've shed,
Or die on bloody field,
By the sons who scorned to yield!
Oh! mothers! lovers! wives!
Oh! weep no more--our lives
Are our country's evermore!
More glorious in your graves,
Than if living Lincoln's slaves,
Ye will perish never more,
Martyred on our fields of gore!
[1] The Grecian mother, on sending her son to battle, pointing to his shield, said--"With it, or on it."
The Beaufort Exile's Lament.
Now chant me a dirge for the Isles of the Sea,
And sing the sad wanderer's psalm--
Ye women and children in exile that flee
From the land of the orange and palm.
Lament for your homes, for the house of your God,
Now the haunt of the vile and the low;
Lament for the graves of your fathers, now trod
By the foot of the Puritan foe!
No longer for thee, when the sables of night
Are fading like shadows away,
Does the mocking-bird, drinking the first beams of light,
Praise God for the birth of a day.
No longer for thee, when the rays are now full,
Do the oaks form an evergreen glade;
While the drone of the locust overhead, seemed to lull
The cattle that rest in the shade.
No longer for thee does the soft-shining moon
Silver o'er the green waves of the bay;
Nor at evening, the notes of the wandering loon
Bid farewell to the sun's dying ray.
Nor when night drops her pall over river and shore,
And scatters eve's merry-voiced throng,
Does there rise, keeping time to the stroke of the oar,
The wild chant of the sacred boat-song.