Our Volunteers.

Where shall we write your names, ye brave!         Where build for you a monument,     Who lie in many a sylvan grave,         Stretched half across the continent!     Young, bright and brave, the very flower         And choice of all we had to give,         With you what glory ceased to live,--         Or lives again in hearts of men.     An inspiration and a power!     For when one sunny day in June,         A sudden war-cry shook the land,     As if from out clear skies at noon         Had dropped the lightning's deadly brand--     Ah then, while rang our British cheers,         And pealed the bugle, rolled the drum,         We saw the Nation rise like one!         Swift formed the files,--a thousand miles     Of them, our gallant Volunteers!     Deep clanged the bells, the drums did beat,         And still from east and west they came;     Echoed the street with martial feet,         From north, from south, with hearts aflame:     Ah, still the tires of freedom burn,--         Be witness, Ridgway's silent shade,         No foe shall dare our land invade,         While hearts like those that met the foes,         Still beat like theirs,--the undismayed,     The brave, who never will return.     Our Country holds them in her heart,         Shrined with her mountains and her rivers;         And still for them her proud lip quivers,     And tears to her great eyelids start:     But they are tears of love and pride,         And she shall tell to coming years         The story of her Volunteers,         For all their names are hers and fame's--     The brave who live, the brave who died.