Sipsey Street Irregulars: "The Muster Drum"

Sunday, February 8, 2009

"The Muster Drum"

I no sooner posted "His Majesty's General Gage's Lament, when this came back at me over the electronic transom. It is from one of the first-generation plankholders in the Appleseed program, one HABCAN, and is entitled "The Muster Drum."

Do ye hear the roll of the Muster Drum
Rattlin' in your brain?
Can ye hear the tramp of Redcoat files
Comin' up your lane?
Rifle and horn and hawk ye have.
Will ye join us in The Fight?
Then find a tree or wall, Good Friend,
And mark well your bright front sight!

For they're comin', Lad, they're comin' fast,
Their bayonets agleam.
And maybe we can't stop 'em here
And maybe they'll cross your stream,
To burn your house and barn, my lad,
Put your family out in the night!
Then find a tree or wall, Good Friend,
And mark well your bright front sight!

We can harry 'em, harry 'em, in the road,
‘Til they wish they'd never come
To confiscate our powder and arms
And carry off our Gun!
We can show the World we're Free Men
Who'll Stand, Defend the Right!
Now find that tree or wall, Good Friend,
And mark well your bright front sight!

A Nation of Riflemen we can be,
If you'll enlist and arm and train!
Our ghosts are waiting for you, Friend,
On range and firing lane.
Can YOU hear the roll of the Muster Drum
By your fireside warm and bright?
Will YOU rise to find YOUR tree or wall
And mark well YOUR bright front sight?

For the need is NOW, my stranger Friend,
And it's urgent and it's plain.
The forces ranged against us
Now have everything to gain.
Take up the Call! Raise high your heart!
Answer the Muster Roll!
Stand shoulder-to with Friend and Friend.
Learn teamwork. Have a goal!

And mebbe, just mebbe, you won't be alone
Some cold and fearsome night
When to live you must find your tree or wall,
And mark well your bright front sight!

1 comment:

idahobob said...: Printed it....

Distributing it.....

Bob
III; February 9, 2009 at 8:46 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, February 8, 2009

"The Muster Drum"

1 comment:

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