hou sent the gallant Hannibal to war,
Taught Romans tactics never known before,
And filled their hearts with ever-cowering awe,
And bowed their haughty heads to thy majestic law.

VII

But in this age is writ another story;
Then pen of arrogant, vain Caucasian sage,
Has thee full robbed of thy immortal glory,
And smeared thy name on History's sacred page!
Forsooth, the Book, once closed for many an age,
Is opened by thy sons--though fraught with pain--
The curtain's drawn; they rise upon the stage;
And their valiant deeds and blood shall wash the stain
As clean as April showers wash the dusty plain.

VIII

I sing now of thy heroes of today,
Thy sturdy warriors and thy gallant knights,
Who charge into the thickest of the fray,
And die for country and their free-born rights,--
For orphans, widows and their little mites.
Thus, Attucks brave, without a moment's pause,
(While reeled the Nation in her darkest plights)
Full bared his breast in Freedom's holy cause,
First fell and tore the code of Tyranny's cruel laws!

IX

Now, if my lay is yet not sweet enough,
I'll bid a gentler, subtler strain awake,
And sing of fights with Jackson on the Gulf
And Perry's hard-fought battle on the Lake!
Of fights in fen and moor and hoary brake,
On Lookout Mountain and the rolling main--
Through searing blasts of bleak December's flake,
And drenching torrents of fair April's rain:
Their valiant deeds are springing ever up amain!

X

They fought, the Union from State's Rights to free;
At Vicksburg, Wagner, and Port Hudson lent
Their aid; their deeds at Pillow and Olustee
Rose surge on surge like ocean billows rent!
The praises of the gallant Ninth and Tenth
Will ever rise and soft float to the sky--
They bagged Old Bull in Rocky Mountain tent;
Then stormed the Spanish block-housed Hills on high,
And bade the tyrant Spaniard's heaving heart to die!

XI

"High time, my Haitian islet must be free!"
Great Touissant thus his declaration tacks;
Then drives proud Frenchmen into the yawning sea--
"The bravest whites, by bravest of the blacks."
Brave Maceo pursues the Spanish packs,
And Aguinaldo, in the mountain wilds,
Pours shot and shell into the tyrants' backs--
They save her throne and Freedom on them smiles,
True heroes, and the Fathers of their sunlit Isles!

XII

Thy sons have triumphed in the Halls of State;
Hamilton and Douglas were the first