William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
Ode for the Fourth of JulyRobert Treat Paine, Jr. (1773–1811)
H
Ye chiefs of valiant deed!
To war-scarr’d bosoms point no more,
Your wounds no longer bleed.
O! ever bless the festal shrine
Your hovering shades explore;
While, laurel-crown’d, ye glide around,
And the seraph-anthem pour—
It is our country’s natal day,
We hail it and adore.
See Independence stride:
Her shields she stretches o’er her vales,
Her spear across the tide:
The harvests of her teeming soil,
She bids the waves expand:
Though tempest roars around her shores,
It dies along the strand;
For the arm that can the plough direct,
The trident can command.
A thousand ages past,
Now sweeps their branches as they fly
Along the ocean blast:
Through every clime her banners float,
And greet the northern wain,
Where dimly bright, with wheeling light,
He pales the freezing plain;
And sees new stars beneath the pole,
New Pleiades on the main.
A nation’s wealthiest mine
His foaming caves when ocean bares,
Not pearls, but heroes shine;
Aloft they mount the midnight surge,
Where shipwreck’d spirits roam,
And oft the knell is heard to swell
Where bursting billows foam:
Each storm a race of heroes rears,
To guard their native home.
The mountain and the deep,
Like Rapine’s secret whirling pool,
With tyrant power can sweep;
The imperial gulf can whelm the keel
Which tempests proudly bore:
In smooth serene, it glides unseen,
Till all its caverns roar;
Till all its hidden ledges crash,
And all its whirlwinds pour.
Stern Independence, rise!
Mid wrecks that choak the pirate’s cave,
Your tatter’d banner lies.
In George’s floating dungeons
Your gallant sailor grieves;
In chains he lies, and wishful sighs
Towards his country heaves.
Rise, Independence! seize thy crown,
Or strip its oaken leaves.