sway
Must crumble from that day;
Before the loftier throne of Heaven,
The hand is raised, the pledge is given--
One monarch to obey, one creed to own,
That monarch, God, that creed, His word alone.

IX.

Spread out earth's holiest records here,
Of days and deeds to reverence dear;
A zeal like this what pious legends tell?
On kingdoms built
In blood and guilt,
The worshippers of vulgar triumph dwell--
But what exploit with theirs shall page,
Who rose to bless their kind;
Who left their nation and their age,
Man's spirit to unbind?
Who boundless seas passed o'er,
And boldly met, in every path,
Famine and frost and heathen wrath,
To dedicate a shore,
Where piety's meek train might breathe their vow,
And seek their Maker with an unshamed brow;
Where liberty's glad race might proudly come,
And set up there an everlasting home?

X.

O many a time it hath been told,
The story of those men of old:
For this fair poetry hath wreathed
Her sweetest, purest flower;
For this proud eloquence hath breathed
His strain of loftiest power;
Devotion, too, hath lingered round
Each spot of consecrated ground,
And hill and valley blessed;
There, where our banished Fathers strayed,
There, where they loved and wept and prayed,
There, where their ashes rest.

XI.

And never may they rest unsung,
While liberty can find a tongue.
Twine, Gratitude, a wreath for them,
More deathless than the diadem,
Who to life's noblest end,
Gave up life's noblest powers,
And bade the legacy descend,
Down, down to us and ours.

XII.

By centuries now the glorious hour we mark,
When to these shores they steered their shattered bark;
And still, as other centuries melt away,
Shall other ages come to keep the day.
When we are dust, who gather round this spot,
Our joys, our griefs, our very names forgot,
Here shall the dwellers of the land be seen,
To keep the memory of the Pilgrims green.
Nor here alone their praises shall go round,
Nor here alone their virtues shall abound--
Broad as the empire of the free shall spread,
Far as the foot of man shall dare to tread,
Where oar hath never dipped, where human tongue
Hath never through the woods of