What constitutes a state? 
Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
  Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
  Not bays and broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
  Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.

  No:—­men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
  In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,—­
  Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,
  Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain: 
  These constitute a state;
And sovereign Law, that state’s collected will,
  O’er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.

LXIX.  THE BRAVE AT HOME. (256)

Thomas Buchanan Read, 1822-1872, an American poet and painter, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania.  At the age of seventeen he entered a sculptor’s studio in Cincinnati.  Here he gained reputation as a painter of portraits.  From this city he went to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and soon after to Florence, Italy.  In the later years of his life, he divided his time between Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Rome.  His complete poetical works fill three volumes.  Several of his most stirring poems relate to the Revolutionary War, and to the late Civil War in America.  Many of his poems are marked by vigor and a ringing power, while smoothness and delicacy distinguish others, no less. ###

The maid who binds her warrior’s sash,
  And, smiling, all her pain dissembles,
The while beneath the drooping lash,
  One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles;
Though Heaven alone records the tear,
  And fame shall never know her story,
Her heart has shed a drop as dear
  As ever dewed the field of glory!

The wife who girds her husband’s sword,
  ’Mid little ones who weep and wonder,
And bravely speaks the cheering word,
  What though her heart be rent asunder;—­
Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear
  The bolts of war around him rattle,—­
Has shed as sacred blood as e’er
  Was poured upon the field of battle!

The mother who conceals her grief,
  While to her breast her son she presses,
Then breathes a few brave words and brief,
  Kissing the patriot brow she blesses;
With no one but her loving God,
  To know the pain that weighs upon her,
Sheds holy blood as e’er the sod
  Received on Freedom’s field of honor!

Note.—­The above selection is from the poem entitled “The Wagoner of the
Alleghanies.”

LXX.  SOUTH CAROLINA. (257)