Gentle friend, dost thou inquire
What's the lineage whence I came?
Jesse is my shepherd sire--
David-Jesse is my name!
=The Veteran and the Child=.
"Come, grandfather, show how you carried your gun
To the field, where America's freedom was won,
Or bore your old sword, which you say was new then,
When you rose to command, and led forward your men;
And tell how you felt with the balls whizzing by,
Where the wounded fell round you, to bleed and to die!"
The prattler had stirred, in the veteran's breast,
The embers of fire that had long been at rest.
The blood of his youth rushed anew through his veins;
The soldier returned to his weary campaigns;
His perilous battles at once fighting o'er,
While the soul of nineteen lit the eye of four-score.
"I carried my musket, as one that must be
But loosed from the hold of the dead, or the free!
And fearless I lifted my good, trusty sword,
In the hand of a mortal, the strength of the Lord!
In battle, my vital flame freely I felt
Should go, but the chains of my country to melt!
"I sprinkled my blood upon Lexington's sod,
And Charlestown's green height to the war-drum I trod.
From the fort, on the Hudson, our guns I depressed,
The proud coming sail of the foe to arrest.
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