I Am An American

"All we have of freedom, all we use or know-

This our fathers bought for us long long ago."

Rudyard Kipling

"Who kept the faith and fought the fight;

The glory theirs, the duty ours."

Wallace Bruce

"We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart."

Albert Einstein

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out and meet it."

Thucydides

I Am An American,

Elias Lieberman

I am an American.

My father belongs to the Sons of the Revolution;

My mother, to the Colonial Dames.

One of my ancestors pitched tea overboard in Boston Harbour;

Another stood his ground with Warren;

Another hungered with Washington at Valley Forge.

My forefathers were America in the making:

They spoke in her council halls;

They died on her battle-fields;

They commanded her ships;

They cleared her forests.

Dawns reddened and paled.

Staunch hearts of mine beat fast at each new star

In the nation's flag.

Keen eyes of mine foresaw her greater glory:

The sweep of her seas,

The plenty of her plains,

The man-hives of her billion-wired cities.

Every drop in me holds a heritage of patriotism.

I am proud of my past.

I am an AMERICAN.

I am an American.

My father was an atom of dust,

My mother a straw in the wind,

To His Serene Majesty.

One of my ancestors died in the mines of Siberia;

Another crippled by twenty blows of the knout.

Another was killed defending his home during the massacres.

The history of my ancestors is a trail of blood

To the palace-gate of the Great Czar.

But then the dream came-

The dream of America.

In the light of the Liberty torch

The atom of dust became a man

And the straw in the wind became a woman

For the first time.

"See," said my father, pointing to the flag that fluttered near,

"That flag of stars and stripes is yours;

It is the emblem of the promised land.

It means, my son, the hope of humanity.

Live for it-die for it!"

Under the open sky of my new country I swore to do so;

And every drop of blood in me will keep that vow.

I am proud of my future.

I am an AMERICAN.