Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 252=324.= the Star-Spangled Banner
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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 rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
On that shore, dimly seen through the mist 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, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in 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 are the foes who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war, and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has 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 their loved homes and the war's desolation; Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when 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!
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=Washington Alston, 1779-1843.= (Manual, pp. 504. 510.)
From the "Sylphs of the Seasons."
=325.=
Methought, within a desert cave, Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave, I suddenly awoke. It seemed of sable night the cell Where, save when from the ceiling fell An oozing drop, her silent spell No sound had ever broke.
There motionless I stood alone, Like some strange monument of stone Upon a barren wild; Or like (so solid and profound The darkness seemed that walled me round) A man that's buried under ground, Where pyramids are piled.
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Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene, "'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween. With sympathy shall move: For I with living melody Of birds in choral symphony, First waked thy soul to poesy, To piety and love.
"When thou, at call of vernal breeze, And beckoning bough of budding trees, Hast left thy sullen fire; And stretched thee in some mossy dell, And heard the browsing wether's bell, Blithe echoes rousing from their cell To swell the tinkling choir:
"Or lured by some fresh-scented gale That wooed the moored fisher's sail To tempt the mighty main, Hast watched the dim, receding shore, Now faintly seen the ocean o'er, Like hanging cloud, and now no more To bound the sapphire plain.
"Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark, (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, Through upper air to leap,) Beheld, from thy most fearful height, The rapid dolphin's azure light Cleave, like a living meteor bright, The darkness of the deep."
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=John Pierpont, 1785-1866.= (Manual, p. 513.)