The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 3.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[77]
     At thy dark Mehemet's decree
Forevermore shall pass from thee;
     And chains forsake each captive's limb
Of all those tribes, whose hills around
     Have echoed back the cymbal sound
And victor horn of Ibrahim.

And thou whose glory and whose crime
     To earth's remotest bound and clime,
In mingled tones of awe and scorn,
     The echoes of a world have borne,
My country! glorious at thy birth,
     A day-star flashing brightly forth,
The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn!
     Oh, who could dream that saw thee then,
And watched thy rising from afar,
     That vapors from oppression's fen
Would cloud the upward tending star?
     Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard,
Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawning,
     Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king,
To mock thee with their welcoming,
     Like Hades when her thrones were stirred
To greet the down-cast Star of Morning!
     “Aha! and art thou fallen thus?
Art thou become as one of us?”

Land of my fathers! there will stand,
     Amidst that world-assembled band,
Those owning thy maternal claim
     Unweakened by thy crime and shame;
The sad reprovers of thy wrong;
     The children that hast spurned so long.