Ho! will the despot trifle,
In dwellings of the free;
Kentuckians yield the rifle,
Kentuckians bend the knee!
With dastard fear of danger,
And trembling at the strife;
Kentucky, to the stranger,
Yield liberty for life!
Up! up! each gallant ranger,
With rifle and with knife!
The bastard and the traitor,
The wolfcub and the snake,
The robber, swindler, hater,
Are in your homes--awake!
Nor let the cunning foeman
Despoil your liberty;
Yield weapon up to no man,
While ye can strike and see,
Awake, each gallant yeoman,
If still ye would be free!
Aye, see to sight the rifle,
And smite with spear and knife,
Let no base cunning stifle
Each lesson of your life:
How won your gallant sires
The country which ye keep?
By soul, which still inspires
The soil on which ye weep!
Leap up! their spirit fires,
And rouse ye from your sleep!
"What!" cry the sires so famous,
In Orleans' ancient field,
"Will ye, our children, shame us,
And to the despot yield?
What! each brave lesson stifle
We left to give you life?
Let apish despots trifle
With home and child and wife?
And yield, O shame! the rifle,
And sheathe, O shame! the knife?"
"There's Life in the Old Land Yet."
First Published in the New Orleans Delta, about September 1, 1861.
By blue Patapsco's billowy dash
The tyrant's war-shout comes,
Along with the cymbal's fitful clash
And the growl of his sullen drums;
We hear it, we heed it, with vengeful thrills,
And we shall not forgive or forget--
There's faith in the streams, there's hope in the hills,
"There's life in the Old Land yet!"
Minions! we sleep, but we are not dead,
We are crushed, we are scourged, we are scarred--
We crouch--'tis to welcome the triumph-tread
Of the peerless Beauregard.
Then woe to your vile, polluting horde,
When the Southern braves are met;
There's faith in the victor's stainless sword,
"There's life in the Old Land yet!"
Bigots! ye quell not the valiant mind
With the clank of an iron chain;
The spirit of Freedom sings in the wind
O'er Merryman, Thomas, and Kane;
And we--though we smite not--are not thralls,
We are piling a gory debt;
While down by McHenry's dungeon walls
"There's life in the Old Land yet!"
Our women, have hung their harps away
And they scowl on your brutal bands,
While the nimble poignard dares the day
In their dear defiant hands;
They will strip their tresses to string our bows
Ere the Northern sun is set--
There's faith in their unrelenting woes--
"There's life in the Old Land yet!"