Stanzas

Composed While Seeing The Effect of President Buchanan's Great Letter to the Connecticut Factionists


I.

YES, factionists! well may ye tremble before
The hot thunderbolt waked in the Patriot’s sky,
To whose pure, moveless arch fi-om your own fcetid shore,
Ye have dared to look up with a blasphemous eye.
How ye reel in the storm that your fully awoke!
How your traitor-lips whiten with fast-falling fears!
How the bolt that indignantly over ye broke,
Smites the terrible music of Truth on your ears!


II.

Yes, well may ye tremble and slink to your den,
Ye, the ones who with falsehood would weaken the hand
That the clear, trumpet voices of millions of men,
From their mountains and valleys have called to command;
How majestic to see the fierce flames from their eyes,
Flash and wither the insolent brows of a crew,
Who would plant the black upas of death-dealing lies,
In the glorious soil where a Washington grew!


III.

0, ye souls of the mighty! who flamed in the past,
And the banner of Union above us unfurled,
When its stars shall be swept by the factionist’s blast,
That would hurl into wreck the last hope of a world—
0, ye glorious shades of our ancestors! pray
That we always may see such a Chief on the sod,
As the one who thus scourges the black Lie away
From a land where Truth’s patent was given by God.