your rifles are true; but they did not do the work of our degradation and subjection. weapon for our destruction. You brought a surer, a deadlier my white brethren. That has done for us what steel and powder could not do. It has wasted us as April suns waste the snow on the hill-tops. It has taken the wisdom out of the brains of our old men, and the manhood out of the limbs of our young warriors. It has made us bad hunters, bad husbands, bad fathers, bad Indians, bad men. When we are settled in our distant hunting-grounds, grant us one favor, at least keep your accursed fire-water from our lips. We may yet be men and warriors, without that. But, with it,war, famine, and disease, shall soon finish the work of extermination which ye have begun. WARREN TO HIS MEN AT BUNKER HILL. STAND! the ground 's your own, my braves! Will ye give it up to slaves? Will ye look for greener graves? Hope ye mercy still? What's the mercy despots feel? — Hear it in that battle-peal! Read it on yon bristling steel! Fear ye foes who kill for hire? Look behind you! they're on fire! * And, before you, see Who have done it! From the vale On they come! and will ye quail ? *The British set fire to Charlestown, which is within sight of Bunker Hill, just before the battle. LIFE WITHOUT FREEDOM. FROM life without freedom, say, who would not fly? In death's kindly bosom our last hope remains And, O! even if Freedom from this world be driven, MOORE. AGAINST CIVIL DISCORD. I HAVE been charged with ambition. Yes, I have ambition; but it is the ambition of being the humble instrument in the hands of Providence to reconcile a distracted people; once more to revive concord and harmony in a distracted land, — the pleasing ambition of contemplating the glorious spectacle of a free, united, prosperous, and fraternal people! هم If there be any who want civil war, who want to see the blood of any portion of our countrymen spilt, I am not one of them. I wish to see war of no kind; but, above all, do I not desire to see a civil war. When war begins, whether civil or foreign, no human foresight is competent to foresee when, or how, or where, it is to terminate. But when a civil war shall be lighted up in the bosom of our own happy land, and armies are marching, and commanders are winning their victories, and fleets are in motion on our coast, tell me, if you can human being can tell, its duration ! THE JUVENILE ORATOR. You 'D scarce expect one of my age And if I chance to fall below De-mos'the-nes or Cicero, Don't view me with a critic's eye, But pass my imperfections by. tell me, if any Large streams from little fountains flow; Tall oaks from little acorns grow: Of judgment weak, and feeble tongue, like me Once learned to read their A, B, C. And why may not Columbia's soil Rear men as great as Britain's isle; Exceed what Greece and Rome have done, Or any land beneath the sun? May n't Massachusetts prove as great CLAY. Or, where's the town, go far and near, Or, where's the boy but three feet high Great, not like Cæsar, stained with blood; DAVID EVERETT. Do not pronounce soil to rhyme with isle; but give the oi its true sound, as in coin. LIBERTY AND UNION. WHEN my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first, and union afterward;” but everywhere spread all over in characters of light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and union, now and for ever, one and inseparable! WEBSTER. PARAPHRASE OF THE NINETEENTH PSALM. THE spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereäl sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim: The unwearied sun, from day to day, The work of an Almighty Hand. Soon as the evening shades prevail, |