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love we owe In peace beneath thy Colors Three, We hail a later Rochambeau! Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth Thy light and hope to all who sit In chains and darkness! Belt the earth With watch-fires from thy torch uplit! Reveal the primal mandate still Which Chaos heard and ceased to be, Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will In signs of fire: "Let man be free!" Shine far, shine free, a guiding light To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim, A lightning-flash the wretch to smite Who shields his license with thy name! ONE OF THE SIGNERS. Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the King. O storied vale of Merrimac Rejoice through all thy shade and shine, And from his century's sleep call back A brave and honored son of thine. Unveil his effigy between The living and the dead to-day; The fathers of the Old Thirteen Shall witness bear as spirits may. Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers The shades of Lee and Jefferson, Wise Franklin reverend with his years And Carroll, lord of Carrollton! Be thine henceforth a pride of place Beyond thy namesake's over-sea, Where scarce a stone is left to trace The Holy House of Amesbury. A prouder memory lingers round The birthplace of thy true man here Than that which haunts the refuge found By Arthur's mythic Guinevere. The plain deal table where he sat And signed a nation's title-deed Is dearer now to fame than that Which bore the scroll of Runnymede. Long as, on Freedom's natal morn, Shall ring the Independence bells, Give to thy dwellers yet unborn The lesson which his image tells. For in that hour of Destiny, Which tried the men of bravest stock, He knew the end alone must be A free land or a traitor's block. Among those picked and chosen men Than his, who here fi
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