Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Quebec—1775

LOUD howl’d the storm, dark gloom’d the night,

The clouded stars denied their light,

To those who to the bloody fight

Advanced in darkness silently.

No noisy drum alarm’d the ear,

No trumpet broke the silent drear,

Nor e’en a footstep could you hear,

As slow they moved, and warily.

Quebec, thy towering ramparts high,

That night had doom’d in flames to lie,

Had not the terrors of the sky

Opposed thy foemen’s bravery.

Now dreary silence is no more,

Earth shakes beneath the cannon’s roar,

The spotless snows were limned with gore,

And carnage riots horribly.

The gloomy face of murky night

Is ’lumined by the streams of light,

That upwards, from the field of fight,

Gleam’d in the black sky fearfully.

Alas! ye brave, your home again

Ye ne’er shall see—for on the plain

The flower of your force lies slain,

And Britain shouts triumphantly.

Ah! whence that loud and piercing yell!

’Twas Freedom, when her hero fell;

A bullet wing’d by fiends of hell,

Has slain the flower of chivalry.

Though he is doom’d to perish here,

Though humble is the warrior’s bier,

Yet moisten’d by a soldier’s tear,

His name shall live eternally.