Aux fils des preux! On! soldiers, on!
Your blades are keen, your courage strong!
Soon shall the conqueror's meed be won,

And triumph swell our battle-song!

"Aux fils des preux!'

י

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

It was a summer's evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet,
In playing there, had found.

He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,

And with a natural sigh,

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory!

"I find them in the garden,

For there's many hereabout; And often when I go to plough

The ploughshare turns them out; For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory!'

"Now, tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now, tell us all about the war,
And what they killed each other for?"

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they killed each other for
I could not well make out.
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory!

66

My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by:

They burned his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;

So with his wife and child he fled,

Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword the country round

Was wasted far and wide;

And many a childing mother then

And new-born baby died.

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight

After the field was won;

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun.

But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,

And our good Prince Eugene."

"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"

66

Said little Wilhelmine.

Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,

"It was a famous victory!

"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win.”
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory!"

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

O! SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming;

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly

streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses ? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam; Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream : 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is the band who so vauntingly swore 'Mid the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country they'd leave us no more Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution;

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between our loved home and the war's desolation ;

Bless'd with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a

nation!

Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, "In GOD is our trust" ;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Before the iron sleet that day-
Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if he but could
Have been with us at Monterey.

Now here, now there, the shot, it hailed
In deadly drifts of fiery spray,

Yet not a single soldier quailed

When wounded comrades round them wailed
Their dying shout at Monterey.

And on- still on our column kept

Through walls of flame its withering way;

Where fell the dead, the living stept,
Still charging on the guns that swept

The slippery streets of Monterey.