Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 2.
Frank Moore, Ed.

82. A song for the time.

[As surely as the leaves are coming out under the breath of Spring, so surely will that nobler spirit of patriotism, which is now stirring the North, create music and songs for us. In the meanwhile, until the poets begin to sing in articulate notes the unwritten music, to which the popular heart is beating time, the following paraphrase of a few stanzas of Aytoun's “Scottish Cavalier,” which may be sung to the familiar tune of “The old English gentleman,” may do a little service by way of relief.]

Come, listen to another song
     That shall make your heart beat high,
Bring the crimson to your forehead,
     And the lustre to your eye;
A song of the days of old,
     Of the years that have long gone by,
And of the yeomen stout and bold,
     As e'er wore sword on thigh.
Of the brave old Yankee¹ yeomen
     Of the days of Seventy-six!

For when the news was spread abroad,
     The struggle had begun,
Far over all our Northern hills
     They started up as one;
And from many a farm and workshop,
     Ere the setting of the sun,
They watered with their sacred blood
     The field of Lexington.
The true old Yankee yeomen
     Of the days of Seventy-six!

They were the first to bend the knee
     When the standard waved abroad;
They were the first to face the foe
     On Bunker's bloody sod;
And ever in the van of fight,
     The foremost still they trod,
Until, on many a well-fought field,
     They gave their souls to God.
Like true old Christian yeomen,
     The men of Seventy-six!

[77] And now their sons all rise again,
     With hearts as brave and true--
The good old times are gone, and yet,
     Thank God! we have these new;
The tree our sires had planted
     Seemed withering where it grew,
But now 'tis bursting into bloom
     'Neath heaven's own light and dew.
The glorious Tree of Liberty,
     The seed of Seventy-six!