Let all that breathe partake, Let rocks their silence break, Our fathers' God, to Thee, To Thee we sing; Long may our land be bright THE TUNE. Pages, and at least two volumes, have been written to prove the origin of that cosmopolitan, halfGregorian descant known here as "America," and in England as "God Save the King." William C. Woodbridge of Boston brought it home with him from Germany. The Germans had been singing it for years (and are singing it now, more or less) to the words, "Heil Dir Im Siegel Kranz," and the Swiss to "Rufst Du mein Vaterland." It was sung in Sweden, also, and till 1833 it was in public use in Russia commonly enough to give it a national character. Von Weber introduced it in his "Jubel" overture, and Beethoven, in 1814, copied it in C Major and wrote piano variations on it. It has been ascribed to Henry Purcell (1696), to Lulli, a French composer (1670), to Dr. John Bull (1619), and to Thomas Ravenscroft and an old Scotch carol as old as 1609. One might fancy that the biography of the famous air resembled Melchizedek's. The truth appears to be that certain bars of music which might easily happen to be similar, or even identical, when plain-song was the common style, were produced at different times and places, and one man finally harmonized the wandering strains into a complete tune. It is now generally conceded that the man was Henry Carey, a popular English composer and dramatist of the first half of the 18th century, who sang the melody as it now is, in 1740, at a public dinner given in honor of Admiral Vernon after his capture of Porto Bello (Brazil). This antedates any authenticated use of the tune ipsissima forma in England or continental Europe. The American history of it simply is that Woodbridge gave it to Mason and Mason gave it to Smith and Smith gave it "My Country 'Tis of Thee." "BY THE RUDE BRIDGE." This genuinely American poem, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson and called usually the "Concord Hymn," was prepared for the dedication of the Battle-monument in Concord, April 19, 1836, and sung there to the time of "Old Hundred. Apparently no change has been made in the original except of a single word in the first line. 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; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, That memory may their deed redeem, Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, The shaft we raise to them and Thee. This does not appear in the hymnals and owns no special tune. Its niche of honor is in the temple of anthology, but it will always be called the "Concord Hymn❞—and the fourth line of its first stanza is a perennial quotation. Ralph Waldo Emerson, LL. D., the renowned American essayist and poet, was born in Boston, 1803. He graduated at Harvard in 1821, and was ordained to the Unitarian ministry, but turned his attention to literature, writing and lecturing on ethical and philosophical themes, and winning universal fame by his original and suggestive prose and verse. He died April 27, 1882. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. After a visit to the Federal camps on the Potomac in 1861, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe returned to her lodgings in Washington, fatigued, as she says, by her "long, cold drive," and slept soundly. Awakening at early daybreak, she began "to twine the long lines of a hymn which promised to suit the measure of the 'John Brown' melody." This hymn was written out after a fashion in the dark, by Mrs. Howe, and she then went back to sleep. Mine 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 retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, THE TUNE. The music of the old camp-meeting refrain,Say, brothers will you meet us? -or, O brother will vou meet me, (No. 173 in the Revivalist,) was written in 1855, by John William Steffe, of Richmond, Va., for a fire company, and was afterwards arranged by Franklin H. Lummis. The air of the "John Brown Song" was caught from this religious melody. The old hymn-tune had the "Glory, Hallelujah" coda, cadenced off with, "For ever, ever more." In 1860-61 the garrison of soldiers at work on the half-dismantled defenses of Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, were fain to lighten labor and mock fatigue with any species of fun suggested by circumstances or accident, and, as for music, they sang everything they could remember or make up. John Brown's memory and fate were fresh in the Northern mind, and the jollity of the not very reverent army men did not exclude frequent allusions to the rash old Harper's Ferry hero. Awag conjured his spirit into the camp with a witticism as to what he was doing, and a comrade retorted, "Marchin' on, of course." A third cried, "Pooh, John Brown's underground." A serio-comic debate added more words, and in the midst of the banter, a musical fellow strung a rhythmic sentence and trolled it to the Methodist tune. "John Brown's body lies a mould'rin' in the ground" was taken up by others who knew the air, the following line was improvised almost instantly, and soon, to the accompaniment of pick, shovel, and crowbar, His soul goes marching on, |
