BEFORE



'TWAS NOT while England's sword unsheathed

Put half a world to flight,

Nor while their new-built cities breathed

Secure behind her might;

Not while she poured from Pole to Line

Treasure and ships and men--

These worshippers at Freedoms shrine

They did not quit her then!



Not till their foes were driven forth

By England o'er the main--

Not till the Frenchman from the North

Had gone with shattered Spain;

Not till the clean-swept oceans showed

No hostile flag unrolled,

Did they remember what they owed

To Freedom--and were bold!





AFTER



THE SNOW lies thick on Valley Forge,

The ice on the Delaware,

But the poor dead soldiers of King George

They neither know nor care.



Not though the earliest primrose break

On the sunny side of the lane,

And scuffling rookeries awake

Their England' s spring again.



They will not stir when the drifts are gone,

Or the ice melts out of the bay:

And the men that served with Washington

Lie all as still as they.



They will not stir though the mayflower blows

In the moist dark woods of pine,

And every rock-strewn pasture shows

Mullein and columbine.



Each for his land, in a fair fight,

Encountered, strove, and died,

And the kindly earth that knows no spite

Covers them side by side.



She is too busy to think of war;

She has all the world to make gay;

And, behold, the yearly flowers are

Where they were in our fathers' day!



Golden-rod by the pasture-wall

When the columbine is dead,

And sumach leaves that turn, in fall,

Bright as the blood they shed.











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