Classic Poem

O THOU that keepest record of the brave,
Something of us to thee is lost, more worth
Than all the fabled wealth of sibyls' leaves.
Not with dull figures, but with heroes' deeds,
Fill up those empty annals. Teach thy youth
To know not North's but Byron's Washington;
To follow Hale's proud step as tearfully
As we pale André's. And when next thy sons
Stand in Manhattan gazing at the swirl
Of eddying trade from Trinity's brown porch,
Astonished, with the praise that half defames,
At the material greatness of the scene,—
The roar, the fret, the Babel-towers of trade,—
Let one stretch forth a hand and touch the stone
That covers Lawrence, saying, “To this height
Our English blood has risen.” And to know
The sea still speaks of courage, let them learn
What murmurs it of Craven in one bay,
And what of Cushing shouts another shore.
(Find but one star, how soon the sky is full!
One hero summons hundreds to the field:
So to the memory.) Let them muse on Shaw,
Whose bones the deep did so begrudge the land
It sent its boldest waves to bring them back
Unto the blue-domed Pantheon where they lie,
The while his soul still leads in martial bronze;
Tell them of sweet-dirged Winthrop, whom to name
Is to be braver, as one grows more pure
Breathing the thought of lover or of saint;
Grim Jackson, Covenanter of the South,
And her well-christened Sidney, fallen soon;
Kearny and Lyon. Of such hearts as these
Who would not boast were braggart of all else.
Each fought for Right—and conquered with the Best.
Such graves are all the ruins that we have—
Our broken arch and battlement—to tell
That ours, like thine, have come of Arthur's race.

O England, wakened from thy lull of song,
Thy scepter, sword, and spindle, fasces-like,
Bound with fresh laurel as thy sign of strength,
When shalt thou win us with a theme of ours,
Reclaiming thus thine own, till men shall say:
“That was the noblest conquest of her rule”?