And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog And smote him, thus. –Othello. It is difficult to conceive that there ever was a time when the United States paid a money tribute to anybody.…
All posts in Hero Tales from American History
The Storming of Stony Point
In their ragged regimentals Stood the old Continentals, Yielding not, When the grenadiers were lunging, And like hail fell the plunging Cannon-shot; When the files Of the isles From the smoky night encampment bore the banner of the rampant Unicorn, And grummer, grummer, grummer, rolled the roll of the drummer, Through the morn! Then with…
King’s Mountain
Our fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress tree; We know the forest round us As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the dark morass. –Bryant. The close of the year 1780 was, in the Southern States,…
Bennington
We are but warriors for the working-day; Our gayness and our guilt are all besmirch’d With rainy marching in the painful field; There’s not a piece of feather in our host (Good argument, I hope, we shall not fly), And time hath worn us into slovenry. But, by the mass, our hearts are in the…
The Battle of Trenton
And such they are–and such they will be found: Not so Leonidas and Washington, Their every battle-field is holy ground Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone. How sweetly on the ear such echoes sound! While the mere victor’s may appal or stun The servile and the vain, such names will be A watchword…