FOUR FOOT ORATORS

Robert P. T. Coffin

All: Golden Friday afternoons

Were when our nation grew,

When boys spoke pieces at the school,

Then New World rooster crew.

Solo 1: Boys so freckled you could not

Put a pin-point down

Stood with Horatius at the bridge

And saved the Roman town.

Solo 2: Boys with maps of Ireland

All over their plain faces

Became old Rome’s aristocrats,

Hidalgos in white laces.

Solo 3: A boy who drove the brown cows home

Was Spartacus defying

The Caesars,

Solo 4: and a stub-nosed lad

Was John of Gaunt a-dying.

Solo 5: Son of Tom, the rail splitter,

With patches at the knee,

Commanded Moses from the bush

To set a people free.

Solo 6: A plowboy turned to Regulus

Felled Carthage with one breath,

A hired-man’s son cried, “Give me

Liberty or give me death!”

All: Henry Clays, John C. Calhouns,

Websters four-foot high

Stood up to tyrants with the New

World fire in their eye.

And these four-foot orators

Who acted out the great

Grew up and were the architects

Of our American state.