The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought-
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought-
Come in her crowning hour-and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men:
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh

To the world-seeking Genoese,

When the land wind, from woods of palm,
And orange groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee-there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral-weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb: But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears: And she, the mother of thy boys,

Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,

The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh:
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's:
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.

Fitz-Greene Halleck [1790-1867]

OLD IRONSIDES

[SEPTEMBER 14, 1830]

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;-

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foc,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;

Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,

The lightning and the gale!

Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]

THE VALOR OF BEN MILAM

[DECEMBER 5-11, 1835]

Oh, who will follow old Ben Milam into San Antonio?

Such was the thrilling word we heard in the chill December

glow;

Such was the thrilling word we heard, and a ringing, answer

ing cry

Went up from the dun adobe walls to the cloudless Texas sky.

He had won from the reek of a Mexique jail back without map or chart,

With his mother-wit and his hero-grit and his stanch Kentucky heart;

He had trudged by vale and by mountain trail, and by thorn and thirsty plain,

And now, with joy on his grizzled brow, he had come to his own again.

They're the spawn of Hell! we heard him tell; they will knife and lie and cheat

At the board of none of the swarthy horde would I deign to sit at meat;

They hold it naught that I bled and fought when Spain was their ruthless foe;

Oh, who will follow old Ben Milam into San Antonio?

It was four to one, not gun for gun, but never a curse cared

we,

Three hundred faithful and fearless men who had sworn to make Texas free.

It was mighty odds, by all the gods, this brute of the Mexique dam,

But it was not much for heroes such as followed old Ben Milam!

With rifle-crack and sabre-hack we drove them back in the

street;

From house to house in the red carouse we hastened their

flying feet;

And ever that shout kept pealing out with a swift and sure death-blow:

Oh, who will follow old Ben Milam into San Antonio ?

Behind the walls from the hurtling balls Cos cowered and swore in his beard,

While we slashed and slew from dawn till dew, and, Bexar, how we cheered!

But ere failed each ruse, and the white of truce on the failing day was thrown,

Our fearless soul had gone to the goal, the Land of the Great Unknown.

Death brought the darksome boon too soon to this truest one of the true,

Or, men of the fated Alamo, Milam had died with you!
So when their names that now are Fame's-the scorners of
braggard sham;-

In song be praised, let a rouse be raised for the name of Ben
Milam!
Clinton Scollard [1860-

THE DEFENCE OF THE ALAMO

[MARCH 6, 1836]

SANTA ANA came storming, as a storm might come; There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade; There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,-

Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,

The chivalry, flower of Mexico;

And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo!

And thirty lay sick, and some were shot through;
For the siege had been bitter, and bloody, and long.
"Surrender, or die!"-"Men, what will you do?"

And Travis, great Travis, drew sword, quick and strong; Drew a line at his feet . . . "Will you come? Will you go? I die with my wounded, in the Alamo."

The Bowie gasped, "Lead me over that line!"

Then Crockett, one hand to the sick, one hand to his gun, Crossed with him; then never a word or a sign

Till all, sick or well, all, all save but one,

One man. Then a woman stepped, praying, and slow
Across; to die at her post in the Alamo.

Then that one coward fled, in the night, in that night
When all men silently prayed and thought

Of home; of to-morrow; of God and the right,

Till dawn: and with dawn came Travis's cannon-shot, In answer to insolent Mexico,

From the old bell-tower of the Alamo.

Then came Santa Ana; a crescent of flame!

Then the red escalade; then the fight hand to hand;

Such an unequal fight as never had name

Since the Persian hordes butchered that doomed Spartan band.

All day—all day and all night; and the morning? so slow, Through the battle-smoke mantling the Alamo.

Now silence! Such silence! Two thousand lay dead
In a crescent outside! And within? Not a breath

Save the gasp of a woman, with gory gashed head,

All alone, all alone there, waiting for death; And she but a nurse. Yet when shall we know Another like this of the Alamo?

Shout "Victory, victory, victory ho!"

I

say 'tis not always to the hosts that win! I say that the victory, high or low,

Is given the hero who grapples with sin, Or legion or single; just asking to know When duty fronts death in his Alamo.

Joaquin Miller [1841-1913]

THE FIGHT AT SAN JACINTO
[APRIL 21, 1836]

"Now for a brisk and cheerful fight!"
Said Harman, big and droll,

As he coaxed his flint and steel for a light,
And puffed at his cold clay bowl;