Clothe with life the weak intent, Let me be the thing I meant ... - John Greenleaf Whittier

We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.

Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of war. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge, and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prison ship.

The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.