r the monarch's sleep,
Thy bare, unguarded breast
Asks not the unbroken, bristling zone
That girds yon sceptred trembler's throne;--
Pass on, and take thy rest!

"Qui vive?" How oft the midnight air
That startling cry has borne!
How oft the evening breeze has fanned
The banner of this haughty land,
O'er mountain snow and desert sand,
Ere yet its folds were torn!
Through Jena's carnage flying red,
Or tossing o'er Marengo's dead,
Or curling on the towers
Where Austria's eagle quivers yet,
And suns the ruffled plumage, wet
With battle's crimson showers!

"Qui vive?" And is the sentry's cry,--
The sleepless soldier's hand,--
Are these--the painted folds that fly
And lift their emblems, printed high
On morning mist and sunset sky--
The guardians of a land?
No! If the patriot's pulses sleep,
How vain the watch that hirelings keep,
The idle flag that waves,
When Conquest, with his iron heel,
Treads down the standards and the steel
That belt the soil of slaves!

NOTES.

Page 6. "They're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm."
The following epitaph is still to be read on a tall grave-stone standing
as yet undisturbed among the transplanted monuments of the dead in Copp's
Hill Burial-Ground, one of the three city cemeteries which have been
desecrated and ruined within my own remembrance:--

"Here lies buried in a
Stone Grave 10 feet deep,
Cap' DANIEL MALCOLM Merch'
Who departed this Life
October 23d, 1769,
Aged 44 years,
a true son of Liberty,
a Friend to the Publick,
an Enemy to oppression,
and one of the foremost
in opposing the Revenue Acts
on America."

Page 62. This broad-browed youth.
Benjamin Robbins Curtis.

Page 62. The stripling smooth of face and slight.
George Tyler Bigelow.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Complete, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETICAL WORKS OF HOLMES ***

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