Haste! form your lines again, ye brave and true!
Haste, haste! your triumphs and your joys suspending!
Th' invader comes; your banners raise anew,
Rush to the strife, your country's cause defending!
Victors! why pause ye?—Are ye weak and few?
Aye, such he deem'd you! and for this descending,
He waits you on the field ye know too well,
The same red war-field where your brethren fell.
Oh! thou devoted land! that canst not rear
In peace thine offspring; thou, the lost and won,
The fair and fatal soil, that dost appear
Too narrow still for each contending son;
Receive the stranger, in his fierce career,
Parting thy spoils!—thy chastening is begun!
And, wresting from thy chiefs the guardian sword,
Foes, whom thou ne'er hadst wrong'd, sit proudly at thy board.
Are these infatuate too? Oh! who hath known
A people e'er by guilt's vain triumph blest?
The wrong'd, the vanquish'd, suffer not alone,
Brief is the joy that swells th' oppressor's breast.
