Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.

The American Patriot’s Song

HARK! hear ye the sounds that the winds on their pinions

Exultingly roll from the shore to the sea,

With a voice that resounds through her boundless dominions?

’Tis Columbia calls on her sons to be free!

Behold on yon summits where Heaven has throned her,

How she starts from her proud, inaccessible seat;

With nature’s impregnable ramparts around her,

And the cataract’s thunder and foam at her feet!

In the breeze of her mountains her loose locks are shaken,

While the soul-stirring notes of her warrior song

From the rock to the valley re-echo, “Awaken,

Awaken, ye hearts that have slumber’d too long!”

Yes, despots! too long did your tyranny hold us,

In a vassalage vile, ere its weakness was known;

Till we learn’d that the links of the chain that controll’d us

Were forged by the fears of its captives alone.

That spell is destroy’d, and no longer availing,

Despised as detested—pause well ere ye dare

To cope with a people whose spirits and feeling

Are roused by remembrance and steel’d by despair.

Go, tame the wild torrent, or stem with a straw

The proud surges that sweep o’er the strand that confines them,

But presume not again to give freemen a law,

Nor think with the chains they have broken to bind them.

To hearts that the spirit of liberty flushes,

Resistance is idle,—and numbers a dream;—

They burst from control, as the mountain stream rushes

From its fetters of ice, in the warmth of the beam.