By steel-sheathed ship and iron gun
And forts that frown on a crouching sea,
Like a reef-split wave in the mad ebb’s run,
Like the foam, rock stopped, from the driven lea,
They have halted their butchering lines of red,
For a star-flung banner has published a ban:
Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead—
Now and forever, American.
It has girdled the depths of our heart’s red blood,
It has welded our chain in a white-heat fire,