SAN JACINTO CORN.[1]
Reading edition
SAN JACINTO CORN.[1]
BY LILLIE E. BARR.
There are thousands who remember the shout of sympathy That rolled from the New England hills down to the Mexic sea When the brave and gallant Houston, with his desperate little band, On San Jacinto's flowery plain won freedom for the land. They brought before him Santa Anna, the crafty and the bold, The wretch who wrote the cruel words: "Slay both the young and old. Spare no American you see; set all their homes ablaze; For they are heretics in faith, foreign in speech and ways." A fugitive, a captive bound, he stood that bright May day Among the stern and angry men that he had vowed to slay, And bowed with all his Spanish grace, and said, in accents bland: "General, you are most fortunate to lead so brave a band! "Are they Americans? If so, I do not understand The men whom Mexico permits to settle in this land. I am a soldier, but ne'er saw such men since I was born." Then Houston took out of his pouch part of an ear of corn. "No, sir, you do not understand," he, smiling proudly, said. "For four days we have lived on corn, tasted not meat or bread. How could you hope to e'er enslave men that were free men born? And who can watch and march and fight upon an ear of corn?" Young Zavala made answer swift: "The hope indeed is vain. General, from off that ear of corn give me, I pray, one grain; And I will plant the precious seed, and hoard whate'er it yields, Till I can freely scatter it o'er all my pleasant fields!" "And I a grain!" "And I a grain!" cried all the eager band. Till Santa Anna surely felt he could not understand The men who prized a grain of corn because in memory It linked itself with a Texan fight for faith and liberty. But in a few short years each grain increased a million-fold, And over many a lovely mile the pleasant story told. I heard it rustling in their leaves one sunny July morn Camping among the tasselled ears of the San Jacinto corn.
