  BY JAMES MADISON BELL. Unfurl your banners to the breeze! Let Freedom's tocsin sound amain, Until the islands of the seas Re-echo with the glad refrain! Columbia's free! Columbia's free! Her teeming streets, her vine-clad groves, Are sacred now to Liberty, And God, who every right approves. Thank God, the Capital is free! The slaver's pen, the auction-block, The gory lash of cruelty, No more, within those ten miles square, Shall men be bought and women sold; Nor infants, sable-hued and fair, Exchanged again for paltry gold. To-day the Capital is free! And free those halls where Adams stood To plead for man's humanity, And for a common brotherhood; Where Sumner stood, with massive frame, Whose eloquent philosophy Has clustered round his deathless name Bright laurels for eternity; Where Wilson, Lovejoy, Wade, and Hale, And other lights of equal power, Have stood, like warriors clad in mail, Before the giant of the hour,— Co-workers in a common cause, Laboring for their country's weal, By just enactments, righteous laws, And burning, eloquent appeal. To them we owe and gladly bring The grateful tributes of our hearts; And while we live to muse and sing, These in our songs shall claim their parts. To-day Columbia's air doth seem Much purer than in days agone; And now her mighty heart, I deem, Hath lighter grown by marching on. |
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