Yorktown

FROM Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hillWho curbs his steed at head of one?Hark! the low murmur: Washington!Who bends his keen, approving glance,Where down the gorgeous line of FranceShine knightly star and plume of snow?Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!The earth which bears this calm arrayShook with the war-charge yesterday,

Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel;October's clear and noonday sunPaled in the breath-smoke of the gun,And down night's double blackness fell,Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.

Now all is hushed: the gleaming linesStand moveless as the neighboring pines;While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,The conquered hosts of England goO'Hara's brow belies his dress,Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless:Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes,Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!

Nor thou alone; with one glad voiceLet all thy sister States rejoice;Let Freedom, in whatever climeShe waits with sleepless eye her time,Shouting from cave and mountain woodMake glad her desert solitude,While they who hunt her quail with fear;The New World's chain lies broken here!

But who are they, who, cowering, waitWithin the shattered fortress gate?Dark tillers of Virginia's soil,Classed with the battle's common spoil,With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine,With Indian weed and planters' wine,With stolen beeves, and foraged corn,--Are they not men, Virginian born?

Oh, veil your faces, young and brave!Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier graveSons of the Northland, ye who setStout hearts against the bayonet,And pressed with steady footfall nearThe moated battery's blazing tier,Turn your scarred faces from the sight,Let shame do homage to the right!

Lo! fourscore years have passed; and whereThe Gallic bugles stirred the air,And, through breached batteries, side by side,To victory stormed the hosts allied,And brave foes grounded, pale with pain,The arms they might not lift again,As abject as in that old dayThe slave still toils his life away.

Oh, fields still green and fresh in story,Old days of pride, old names of glory,Old marvels of the tongue and pen,Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men,Ye spared the wrong; and over allBehold the avenging shadow fall!Your world-wide honor stained with shame,--Your freedom's self a hollow name!

Where's now the flag of that old war?Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star?Bear witness, Palo Alto's day,Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey,Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak;Symbol of terror and despair,Of chains and slaves, go seek it there!

Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranksLaugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks!Brave sport to see the fledgling bornOf Freedom by its parent torn!Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell,Safe drear Siberia's frozen hellWith Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled,What of the New World fears the Old?