One Of The Signers

O storied vale of Merrimac     Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,     And from his century's sleep call back     A brave and honored son of thine.     Unveil his effigy between     The living and the dead to-day;     The fathers of the Old Thirteen     Shall witness bear as spirits may.     Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers     The shades of Lee and Jefferson,     Wise Franklin reverend with his years     And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!     Be thine henceforth a pride of place     Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,     Where scarce a stone is left to trace     The Holy House of Amesbury.     A prouder memory lingers round     The birthplace of thy true man here     Than that which haunts the refuge found     By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.     The plain deal table where he sat     And signed a nation's title-deed     Is dearer now to fame than that     Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.     Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,     Shall ring the Independence bells,     Give to thy dwellers yet unborn     The lesson which his image tells.     For in that hour of Destiny,     Which tried the men of bravest stock,     He knew the end alone must be     A free land or a traitor's block.     Among those picked and chosen men     Than his, who here first drew his breath,     No firmer fingers held the pen     Which wrote for liberty or death.     Not for their hearths and homes alone,     But for the world their work was done;     On all the winds their thought has flown     Through all the circuit of the sun.     We trace its flight by broken chains,     By songs of grateful Labor still;     To-day, in all her holy fanes,     It rings the bells of freed Brazil.     O hills that watched his boyhood's home,     O earth and air that nursed him, give,     In this memorial semblance, room     To him who shall its bronze outlive!     And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice     That in the countless years to come,     Whenever Freedom needs a voice,     These sculptured lips shall not be dumb