Epigraph
’Tis just three hundred years ago
We sailed through unknown Narrows
And landed on an unknown coast
Amid a flight of arrows.
We planted England’s standard there,
And taught the Western savage.
In its defence we lightly held
His tomahawk and ravage.
And there, between two forest trees,
We raised our first rude altar;
Roofed by a storm-rent sail we read
Old England’s Prayers and Psalter,
An echo in the strange, new land
Awoke to slumber never:
It caught old England’s battle-word—
“God and my Right” forever!
THE BIRTH OF THE NATION