Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

On General Washington

SEE! Freedom’s ensign glittering waves unfurl’d!

There, stamp’d in gold, appears the hero’s name

Whose deeds are echoed round the admiring world;

And distant ages shall record his fame.

’Twas his to stem the dreadful tide of war;

’Twas his to teach the battle where to rage:

With sounding pinions Victory shades his car,

His legions eye him, eager to engage.

Calmly he views each army’s dread array,

And seems himself the bulwark of the field:

His skill, superior, turns the doubtful day:

His foes were Britons—long unused to yield.

Death, circling, flew around the ensanguined plain:

There Fate, with fury, drove her maddening car;

With human gore the clotted wheels distain’d,

And view’d, exulting, all the waste of war.

The tide of blood which late o’erflowed the field,

Fann’d by the breezes, stiffens in the glade:

A brother’s with a brother’s is congeal’d,

And sons of Britons are with Britons laid.

The battle finish’d, and the carnage o’er,

The vanquish’d see him, and confess his worth:

His eye, averted, shuns the flood of gore,

The noblest hero, and best son of earth.