Five hundred hours of midnight
Would not count my paces ere the dawn
Back and forth I walk and wonder
How God will tear the sky asunder
Rend the storm and come down.
Stand, you weak-kneed children of commerce
Find your fire and stand!
If not here, backs to the last patch of daylight,
Facing the oncoming sheet of midnight
If not now, then where?
Your fathers were fat and lazy cowards
Who hesitantly raised a flag against the world
And stood, with scowls at their own achievement
Humbled emperors in their raiment
Laid low the mighty in their hour in heaps untold
But for all their failings; greed, avarice and shame,
They clasped their swords with hands unyielding
Fought and lost and were sent reeling
And fought again and won, this little land
And we who eat from vineyards we did not tend to
And fields we did not sow
Now found again where they left it:
A rusty sword, a defunct musket
And the call to march, and stand!
