Читать книгу The Two Spies: Nathan Hale and John André онлайн

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'Splendid in their ashes, pompous in the grave,'

the children of Washington have left the body of Hale to sleep in its unknown tomb, though it be on his native soil, unhonored by any outward observance, unmarked by any memorial stone. Monody, eulogy, monument of marble or of brass, and of letters more enduring than all, have in his own land and in ours given the name and fate of André to the sorrowing remembrance of all time to come. American genius has celebrated his praises, has sung of his virtues, and exalted to heroic heights his prayer, manly but personal to himself, for choice in the manner of death—his dying challenge to all men to witness the courage with which he met his fate. But where, save on the cold page of history, stands the record of Hale? Where is the hymn that speaks to immortality, and tells of the added brightness and enhanced glory when his soul joined its noble host? And where sleep the American of Americans, that their hearts are not stirred to solemn rapture at the thought of the sublime love of country which buoyed him not alone 'above the fear of death,' but far beyond all thought of himself, of his fate and his fame, or of anything less than his country—and which shaped his dying breath into the sacred sentence which trembled at the last upon his quivering lip?"