Poem by Edmund Clarence Stedman

Treason's Last Device

Sons of New England, in the fray,
     ⁠Do you hear the clamor behind your back?
Do you hear the yelping of Blanche, and Tray,
⁠     Sweetheart, and all the mongrel pack?
Girded well with her ocean crags,
⁠     Little our mother heeds their noise;
Her eyes are fixed on crimsoned flags:
⁠     But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys?

Do you hear them say that the patriot fire
     ⁠Burns on her altars too pure and bright,
To the darkened heavens leaping higher,
⁠     Though drenched with the blood of every fight;
That in the light of its searching flame
⁠     Treason and tyrants stand revealed,
And the yielding craven is put to shame,
⁠     On Capitol floor or foughten field?

Do you hear the hissing voice, which saith
⁠     That she—who bore through all the land
The lyre of Freedom, the torch of Faith,
     ⁠And young Invention's mystic wand—
Should gather her skirts and dwell apart,
⁠     With not one of her sisters to share her fate,—
A Hagar, wandering sick at heart;
⁠     A pariah, bearing the Nation's hate?

Sons, who have peopled the distant West,
⁠     And planted the Pilgrim vine anew,
Where, by a richer soil carest,
     ⁠It grows as ever its parent grew,
Say, do you hear,—while the very bells
⁠     Of your churches ring with her ancient voice,
And the song of your children sweetly tells
⁠     How true was the land of your fathers' choice,—

Do you hear the traitors who bid you speak
     ⁠The word that shall sever the sacred tie?
And ye, who dwell by the golden Peak,
     ⁠Has the subtle whisper glided by?
Has it crost the immemorial plains,
     ⁠To coasts where the gray Pacific roars
And the Pilgrim blood in the people's veins
⁠     Is pure as the wealth of their mountain ores?

Spirits of sons who, side by side,
⁠     In a hundred battles fought and fell,
Whom now no East and West divide,
⁠     In the isles where the shades of heroes dwell;
Say, has it reached your glorious rest,
     ⁠And ruffled the calm which crowns you there,—
The shame that recreants have confest,
⁠     The plot that floats in the troubled air?

Sons of New England, here and there,
     Wherever men are still holding by
The honor our fathers left so fair!
     ⁠Say, do you hear the cowards' cry?
Crouching among her grand old crags,
     ⁠Lightly our mother heeds their noise,
With her fond eyes fixed on distant flags;
⁠     But you—do you hear it, Yankee boys? 

1. Country Sleighing
2. Round the Old Board
3. Gifford
4. The Heart of New England
5. Mater Coronata

Print

1185 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version