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THE ENIGMA.
- PALE victims, where is your Fatherland?
- Where oppression is law from age to age,
- Where the death‐plague, and hunger, and misery rage,
- And tyrants a godless warfare wage
- ’Gainst the holiest rights of an ancient land.
- Where the corn waves green on the fair hillside,
- But each sheaf by the serfs and slavelings tied
- Is taken to pamper a foreigner’s pride—
- There is our suffering Fatherland.
- Where broad rivers flow ’neath a glorious sky,
- And the valleys like gems of emerald lie;
- Yet, the young men, and strong men, starve and die,
- For want of bread in their own rich land.
- And we pile up their corses, heap on heap,
- While the pale mothers faint, and the children weep;
- Yet, the living might envy the dead their sleep,
- So bitter is life in that mourning land.
- Oh! Heaven ne’er looked on a sadder scene;
- Earth shuddered to hear that such woe had been;
- Then we prayed, in despair, to a foreign queen,
- For leave to live on our own fair land.
- We have wept till our faces are pale and wan;
- We have knelt to a throne till our strength is gone;
- We prayed to our masters, but, one by one,
- They laughed to scorn our suffering land;
- And sent forth their minions, with cannon and steel,
- Swearing with fierce, unholy zeal,
- To trample us down with an iron heel,
- If we dared but to murmur our just demand.—
- Know ye not now our Fatherland?
- What! are there no MEN in your Fatherland,
- To confront the tyrant’s stormy glare,
- With a scorn as deep as the wrongs ye bear,
- With defiance as fierce as the oaths they sware,
- With vengeance as wild as the cries of despair,
- That rise from your suffering Fatherland?
- Are there no SWORDS in your Fatherland,
- To smite down the proud, insulting foe,
- With the strength of despair dispair give blow for blow
- Till the blood of the baffled murderers flow
- On the trampled soil of your outraged land?
- Are your right arms weak in that land of slaves,
- That ye stand by your murdered brothers’ graves,
- Yet tremble like coward and crouching knaves,
- To strike for freedom and Fatherland?
- Oh! had ye faith in your Fatherland,
- In God, your Cause, and your own right hand,
- Ye would go forth as saints to the holy fight,
- Go in the strength of eternal right,
- Go in the conquering Godhead’s might—
- And save or AVENGE your Fatherland!
