ODE TO A NATION..............

Bold riders on cobblestones about
Giving everyone a shout
One if by land two if by sea
The call went out for freedom for liberty

Red coats in line marching on the green
Flintlocks fire the torch is lit
No turning back this is it
Freedom loving true and brave
Rush forward to battle on the day
Concord Mass.,, Bunker hill
They're there still

Valley Forge,, Washington over the Delaware
Caught the Hessians unaware
Shoeless men muskets flare
Saratoga hero Arnold
West Point traitor Benedict
Gates made to sway,, caught against the bay

7 years of sweat and blood
Freedomland born we love

Quiet over the land
Washington uses a steady hand
Freedom liberty justice is ready to stand
All inclusive,, except the women and the Blackman
Washington,, Adams,, Jefferson,, Franklin
They give meaning to the words apon the page
Stars and stripes forever may they wave

Cannons rumble bayonets shinning flare
Redcoats again from Trafalgar Square
Southlands under seize by tyranny
New Orleans was Old Hickory’s call
Bayonets made to fall Jackson above them all
White house proves his destiny
To the West to the West young man
Lewis and Clark mapped the unknown land
Redman in his ancestral homes made to roam
Calvary sent to make him relent
Freedom liberty justice not given to all

Nation divided from North to South
Slavery in the South was the shout
Injustice chains the Blackman’s hand
Blood of brothers across the land
Self evident-truths left behind
The blue and the grey in long battle lines
The test of a nation to undo its sins
Liberty freedom and justice for all
Pillars of a mighty nation about to fall

Fort Sumter,, Vicksburg,, Chancellorsville
Slaughtered youth in the Wilderness
Corpses and heroes lay on every side
It is a bloody tide,, dark years before victory
Lee,, Grant,, Jackson,, Sherman,, Longstreet,, McClellan
Names carved in our history
Harpers Ferry,, Cold Harbor,, Antietam,, Shiloh
Death unbound along the Sunken Road
Shoeless boys at Gettysburg
The devils triangle,, cemetery ridge,, little round top
Kin against kin,, brother against brother it will not stop

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (Abraham Lincoln,, November 19, 1863)

Tribute to the fallen blue and grey
Two years behind,, two years ahead
Mothers weeping among the dead
In shallow graves the valiant rest
Atlanta in ashes,, Sherman to the sea
Blood washed victories
Amendment to set all men free
"With malice toward none; with charity for all”

Appomattox a final painful victory
Lee honorable in his defeat
A weary nation is reborn
Booth a name of infamy
Lincoln dead,, saver of liberty

Days of numbers the years entwine
Twin lines of steel to the westward way
Across a wide nation they were laid
Indian nations made to pay
Sitting Bull,, chiefs of many nations
Standing proud against Custer’s cavalry
Custer with his vanity too bold
In an unmarked grave he lays cold
Trails of tears,, gone are the buffalo days
In reservations the Redman is made to stay
Forever gone is freedom of the prairie

Twisted strands of ranching wire
Dividing the land into farms and fields
Voices across the telegraph sing
Cities of granite stone and steel
Industrial revolutions on the wheel
Soaring into a new century
Plenty for all,, all for plenty
Faceless workers toil for the penny
Mighty are the robber barons
Steel oil trains coal and money
Rich are the few,, many are the hungry

Factories of smoke and ash
Steel columns form the New World skyline
Remember the Maine
San Juan Hill a Rough Rider forward
Spanish made to concede
Teddy rides into the great house
A way to the west thru the Panama
Carved with jaws of steel lives of men

Businesses rise businesses fall
Monopolies broken by the bully pulpit
Dark clouds forming apon the European lands
Kaiser in his vest pushes everyone west
Isolation in the land of the free is the call
We stand here not a help at all
Silent killers from the ocean deep
Lusitania near the coast no more
War war let the cannons roar
A nation seeks to settle the score

In fields muddy and vast
The youth of many nations do not last
Trenches filled with the living dead
New ways to slaughter humanity
Gas tanks airplanes and machine guns
Make red the ground
Millions sacrificed beneath the cannons sound
The Hun beaten back
The war to end all wars is done
Homeward bound are the young

Roaring twenties a carefree time
But only for a short while
Gangsters fill the papers with their smiles
Dust blows over the West apon every mile
Uneasy sits the token
Banks backs are broken
Soup lines for every hour
Poverty and uncertain is a days pay
Hoovervilles fill the squares
Will you buy my apple for a dime

Grey and grey every day
Someone new must lead the way
FDR promises to know what’s true
Acts apon acts laws apon laws
To restart the mighty nation moving
Out with the old in with the New Deal
He now guides the nation to Oh Happy Days

Tyranny rising again in the Deutschland
France Poland Belgium the Netherlands
All fall before swastika blitzkrieg
Brits stood alone,, a nation of the brave
Innocents under the Nazi blade
Battleship row breached a mighty blow
Pearl Harbor starts our bloody road
United front against Hitler Mussolini and Tojo
Now its freedoms round
Omaha Juno Sword and Gold
Forward ever forward went the brave and bold
With sword and lance to advance
Freedom all mighty given back to France
Tanks and bombers making a growling sound
Bastogne stood alone valiant rangers held the town

Patton and the Third delivering a Christmas present
Beating tyranny into the ground
Enola Gay on a fateful day
Ashen flash apon men and women
V-E day V-J day,, so many did pay
Promises to keep,, promises kept

Net of steel and woven wire
Blasted stone and concrete walls
Separate East from West
Freedom and liberty not in Stalin’s breast
Cold apon the dividing line
Bombers fill the sky to keep a city alive
Filled with supplies for a Berlin divided
Trying to keep hope alive against Stalin’s lies
Marshall’s plan was the fix
To restore nations worth and let freedom hold
Bulldog swept aside,, he was mightier that the rest
He barked and growled,, he passed the test
An island nation surely knew he was the best

Coldness in the air day and night
Atomic glows do not warm the soul
Hydrogen and plutonium atoms split apart
Easy to start a spark
If careless actions done in the dark
U.N. created to give mankind hope

Invasion from the North
Minions of evil bring darkness to the South
U.N. council seeks the vote
Brave youth from many lands
Sent to lend the South a hand
Trail of corpses in the frozen valleys
MacArthur beaten back
Not ready for the attack
Mighty ocean fleet carries the brave to Inchon
MacArthur gambit end round
Evil minions trapped in a steel wrapped vise
Northward northward was MacArthur’s shout
Truman decisive in his thoughts
MacArthur relieved from his bloody toil
Calmness and quiet brought back to the beginning
Uneasy lay the dead along the parallel

Blackness in the cold of space
Sputnik won the race
New terrors for the human face
ICBMs easily go round and round
No one safe on the ground
Shoes make pounding sounds
Khrushchev acts the barking fool
Kennedy keeps his cool
Bay of Pigs,, missile launchers
Blockade in October
Wise men talk then it is over

Flashes in Dallas
Greatness swept away by an evil hand
Tears and lament woe and sorrow

“I have a dream,, I have looked over the mountain”
Great man in a pool of red on the balcony
Watts,, Detroit,, cities of fire
Nation divided black and white
Civil rights was the song,, undo the years of wrong
Nations promises unkept,, Blackman weeping
Ambassador Hotel,, brother of great man bleeding
Brave fearless warriors
In rice paddies screaming
Bombers above,, wailing below
My Lai,, Khe Sanh,, Hue,, Tet
Generals inept to stem the evil tide
Bullets flying brave youth dying
Cronkite wails all is naught
Evil at the gate,, helicopters used to escape
What a waste of fearless youth all round
Nation scornful of the guardians
Spitting in their face,, a nation disgraced
No waves,, hugs or parades for them
Only a moaning wailing sound

Nation floundering near the abyss
Where is liberties kiss
Where is freedoms vow
Tranquility base here,, the Eagle has landed
Watergate,, president disgraced
New captains at the wheel
Embargo of oil and gas
Inflation unbound the token does not last
Wondering what went wrong,, Nation pauses
Time to remember freedoms song

To mars and beyond
80s and 90s the money sounds
Intel with the micro chip
Gates at the Window ship
Tyrant of the forgotten sand
Invasion of tiny Kuwait
Tyrant will not repent
Back of tyrants army broken
Schwarzkopf leads the parade
Gallant warriors on Park Avenue
Passing before the nations view
Applause applause we love you few

Silver wings into the towers
Evil rising once more at freedoms door
Falling glass steel and humanity
All brought down by a madman’s vanity
Nation staggered by the evil that was made
Lady in the harbor weeps tears of sorrow
Ashen clouds and grief filled streets
A madman’s day of victory fills the page
The call goes out to defeat his minions
Where they lay

To forgotten lands across the sea
Mighty warriors of a great land
Sent to destroy the evil there
Shock and awe on the video
Saddam captured and hung in the gallows
Serpents of Allah rendered into the sand
Freedoms voice can now be heard
Will freedom liberty and justice take hold
Will the sacrifice and victories be shallow
Only on the sunrise of the morrow
Can it be known

A mighty nation in God we trust
Goes forth into the vast unknown
Of history before us……………..