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
You brought the whiskey-bottle,

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!
Ask it ye who will.

Fear ye foes who kill for hire?
Will ye to your homes retire?

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?
For one day of freedom, O! who would not die?
Hark! — hark! 't is the trumpet! the call of the brave,
The death-song of tyrants, the dirge of the slave.
Our country lies bleeding-haste, haste to her aid;
One arm that defends is worth hosts that invade.

In death's kindly bosom our last hope remains
The dead fear no tyrants, the grave has no chains.
On, on to the combat! the heroes that bleed
For virtue and country are heroes indeed.

And, O! even if Freedom from this world be driven,
Despair not at least we shall find her in heaven!

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
To speak in public, on the stage;

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:
And though I now am small and young,

Of judgment weak, and feeble tongue,
Yet all great learnëd men,

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
As any other sister state?

CLAY.

Or, where's the town, go far and near,
That does not find a rival here ?

Or, where's the boy but three feet high
Who's made improvements more than I?
These thoughts inspire my youthful mind
To be the greatest of mankind;

Great, not like Cæsar, stained with blood;
But only great, as I am good.

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,
Does his Creator's power display,
And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty Hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly, to the listening earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;