  Ye sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought For those rights which unstain’d from your sires had descended, May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought, And your sons reap the soil which your fathers defended! ’Mid the reign of mild peace, May your nation increase, With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece. And ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. In a clime whose rich vales feed the marts of the world, Whose shores are unshaken by Europe’s commotion, The trident of Commerce should never be hurl’d To increase the legitimate powers of the ocean. But should pirates invade, Though in thunder array’d, Let your cannon declare the free charter of trade; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. The fame of our arms, of our laws the mild sway, Had justly ennobled our nation in story, Till the dark clouds of faction obscured our young day, And enveloped the sun of American glory. But let traitors be told, Who their country have sold, And bartered their God for his image in gold, That ne’er will the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. While France her huge limbs bathes recumbent in blood, And society’s base threats with wide dissolution; May peace, like the dove who return’d from the flood, Find an ark of abode in our mild constitution. But, though peace is our aim, Yet the boon we disclaim, If bought by our sovereignty, justice, or fame; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. ’Tis the fire of the flint each American warms: Let Rome’s haughty victors beware of collision; Let them bring all the vassals of Europe in arms, We’re a world by ourselves, and disdain a provision. While with patriot pride To our laws we’re allied, No foe can subdue us, no faction divide; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. Our mountains are crown’d with imperial oak, Whose roots, like our liberties, ages have nourish’d; But long ere our nation submits to the yoke, Not a tree shall be left on the field where it flourish’d. Should invasion impend, Every grove would descend From the hilltops they shaded our shores to defend; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. Let our patriots destroy Anarch’s pestilent worm, Lest our liberty’s growth should be check’d by corrosion; Then let clouds thicken round us: we heed not the storm; Our realm fears no shock, but the earth’s own explosion. Foes assail us in vain, Though their fleets bridge the main, For our altars and laws with our lives we’ll maintain; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. Should the tempest of war overshadow our land, Its bolts could ne’er rend Freedom’s temple asunder; For, unmov’d, at its portal would Washington stand, And repulse with his breast the assaults of the thunder! His sword from the sleep Of its scabbard would leap, And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. Let Fame to the world sound America’s voice; No intrigues can her sons from their government sever: Her pride is her Adams, their laws are his choice, And shall flourish till Liberty slumbers forever. Then unite heart and hand, Like Leonidas’ band, And swear to the God of the ocean and land, That ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. —Robert Treat Paine. STATUE OF THE MINUTEMAN AT CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS The father of the author of Adams and Liberty, or as it has been more usually entitled in later days, Ye Sons of Columbia, was the Robert Treat Paine who was one of the immortal signers of the Declaration of Independence. The author of He was a very precocious and brilliant youth. When he was seven years of age his family removed from Taunton, where he was born, to Boston, and there he prepared for Harvard College at one of the public schools, entering the freshman class in his fifteenth year. One of his classmates wrote a squib on him in verse on the college wall, and Paine, on consultation with his friends, being advised to retaliate in kind, did so, and thus became aware of the poetic faculty of which he afterward made such liberal use. He wrote nearly all his college compositions in verse, with such success that he was assigned the post of poet at the College Exhibition in the autumn of 1791, and at the Commencement in the following year. After receiving his diploma, he entered the counting-room of Mr. James Tisdale, but soon proved that his tastes did not lie in that direction. He would often be carried away by day-dreams and make entries in his day-book in poetry. On one occasion when he was sent to the bank with a check for five hundred dollars, he met some literary acquaintances on the way and went off with them to Cambridge, and spent a week in the enjoyment In 1792 young Paine fell deeply in love with an actress, a Miss Baker, aged sixteen, who was one of the first players to appear in Boston. Their performances were at first called dramatic recitations to avoid a collision with a law forbidding “stage plays.” He married Miss Baker in 1794, and was promptly turned out of doors by his father. The next year, on taking his degree of A.M. at Cambridge, he delivered a poem entitled The Invention of Letters. There was a great deal of excitement over this poem at the time, as it contained some lines referring to Jacobinism, which the college authorities crossed out, but which he delivered as written. The poem was greatly admired, and Washington wrote him a letter in appreciation of its merits. It was immediately published and large editions sold, the author receiving fifteen hundred dollars as his share of the profits, which was no doubt a very grateful return to a poet with a young wife and an obdurate father. The breach with his family, however, was afterward healed. Mr. Paine was also the author of a poem entitled The Ruling Passion, for which he received twelve hundred dollars. Still another famous poem of his was called The Steeds of Apollo. In 1794 he produced his earliest ode, Rise, Columbia “When first the sun o’er ocean glow’d And earth unveil’d her virgin breast, Supreme ’mid Nature’s vast abode Was heard th’ Almighty’s dread behest: ‘Rise, Columbia, brave and free, Poise the globe, and bound the sea.’” His most famous song, Adams and Liberty,—which is sung to the same tune as Key’s Star-Spangled Banner, or Anacreon in Heaven,—was written four years later at the request of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. Its sale yielded him a profit of more than seven hundred and fifty dollars. These receipts show an immediate popularity which has seldom been achieved by patriotic songs. In 1799 he delivered an oration on the first anniversary of the dissolution of the alliance with France which was a great oratorical triumph. The author sent a copy, after its publication, to Washington, and received a reply in which the General says: “You will be assured that I am never more gratified than when I see the effusions of genius from some of the rising generation, which promises to secure our national rank in the literary world; as I trust their firm, manly, and patriotic conduct will ever maintain it with dignity in the political. The next to the last stanza of Adams and Liberty was not in the song as originally written. Paine was dining with Major Benjamin Russell, when he was reminded that his song had made no mention of Washington. The host said he could not fill his glass until the error had been corrected, whereupon the author, after a moment’s thinking, scratched off the lines which pay such a graceful tribute to the First American:— “Should the tempest of war overshadow our land, Its bolts could ne’er rend Freedom’s temple asunder; For, unmov’d, at its portal would Washington stand, And repulse with his breast the assaults of the thunder! His sword from the sleep Of its scabbard would leap, And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep; For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.” Instead of being added to the hymn it was inserted as it here appears. The second, fourth, and fifth stanzas have been usually omitted in recent publications of the hymn. The brilliant genius of Paine was sadly eclipsed Liberty Bell GEORGE WASHINGTON |
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