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?