Bade Time unroll The fateful scroll, And empire unto Freedom gave From cloudland height to tropic wave. Poured through the gateways of the North The mountains yield Ores that the wealth of Ophir shame, Lo, through what years the soil hath lain, The ripening boll, the myriad fleece! League after league across the land The ceaseless herds obey Thy hand. Thou, whose high archways shine most clear To see made one Their brood throughout Earth's greenest space, Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908] CONCORD HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] MINE BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call re treat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, Julia Ward Howe [1819-1910] THE EAGLE'S SONG THE lioness whelped, and the sturdy cub "To be staunch, and valiant, and free, and strong!" The lion-whelp sprang from the eyrie nest, From the lofty crag where the queen birds rest; He fought the King on the spreading plain, And reared his cattle, and reaped his sheaf, Two were the sons that the country bore And the land was red in a sea of blood, Where brother for brother had swelled the flood! And now that the two are one again, And the lion cubs twain sing the eagle's song: "To be staunch, and valiant, and free, and strong!" Richard Mansfield [1857-1907] THE FLAG GOES BY HATS off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, The flag is passing by! Blue and crimson and white it shines, Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. Hats off! The colors before us fly'; But more than the flag is passing by: Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Weary marches and sinking ships; Cheers of victory on dying lips; Days of plenty and years of peace; March of a strong land's swift increase; Equal justice, right and law, Stately honor and reverend awe; Sign of a nation, great and strong To ward her people from foreign wrong: Live in the colors to stand or fall. Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; Hats off! The flag is passing by! Henry Holcomb Bennett [1863– UNMANIFEST DESTINY To what new fates, my country, far Across the sea that knows no beach The guns that spoke at Lexington Knew not that God was planning then The trumpet word of Jefferson To bugle forth the rights of men. To them that wept and cursed Bull Run, Who saw behind the cloud the sun? Had not defeat upon defeat, The slave's emancipated feet Had never marched behind the drum. There is a Hand that bends our deeds |