From "Julius Cæsar" BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

_Flavius_. Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

_Second Citizen_. Indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see Cæsar, and to rejoice in his triumph.

_Marullus_. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome, To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels? You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The live-long day, with patient expectation To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome; And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, To hear the replication of your sounds, Made in her concave shores? And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now cull out a holiday? And do you now strew flowers in his way That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood? Be gone! Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, Pray to the gods to intermit the plague That needs must light on this ingratitude.

THE RECESSIONAL

From "Collected Verse," with the permission of A. P. Watt and Son, London, and Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, publishers BY RUDYARD KIPLING

God of our fathers, known of old-- Lord of our far-flung battle-line-- Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget.

The tumult and the shouting dies-- The captains and the kings depart-- Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget.

Far-called our navies melt away-- On dune and headland sinks the fire, Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget.

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe-- Such boasting as the Gentiles use Or lesser breeds without the Law-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget.

For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard-- All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding calls not Thee to guard-- For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord.

THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY

From Webster’s Reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers of "The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster" BY DANIEL WEBSTER

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure,--it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.