The Pilgrim's Fathers
ONE righteous word for Law—the common will;
One living truth of Faith—God regnant still;
One primal test of Freedom—all combined;
One sacred Revolution—change of mind;
One trust unfailing for the night and need—
The tyrant-flower shall cast the freedom-seed.
So held they firm, the Fathers aye to be,
From Home to Holland, Holland to the sea—
Pilgrims for manhood, in their little ship,
Hope in each heart and prayer on every lip.
They could not live by king-made codes and creeds;
They chose the path where every footstep bleeds.
Protesting, not rebelling; scorned and banned;
Through pains and prisons harried from the land;
Through double exile,—till at last they stand
Apart from all,—unique, unworldly, true,
Selected grain to sow the earth anew;
A winnowed part—a saving remnant they;
Dreamers who work—adventurers who pray!
What vision led them? Can we test their prayers?
Who knows they saw no empire in the West?
The later Puritans sought land and gold,
And all the treasures that the Spaniard told;
What line divides the Pilgrims from the rest?
We know them by the exile that was theirs;
Their justice, faith, and fortitude attest;
And those long years in Holland, when their band
Sought humble living in a stranger's land.
They saw their England covered with a weed
Of flaunting lordship both in court and creed.
With helpless hands they watched the error grow,
Pride on the top and impotence below;
Indulgent nobles, privileged and strong,
A haughty crew to whom all rights belong;
The bishops arrogant, the courts impure,
The rich conspirators against the poor;
The peasant scorned, the artisan despised;
The all-supporting workers lowest prized.
They marked those evils deepen year by year:
The pensions grow, the freeholds disappear,
Till England meant but monarch, prelate, peer.
At last, the Conquest! Now they know the word:
The Saxon tenant and the Norman lord!
No longer Merrie England: now it meant
The payers and the takers of the rent;
And rent exacted not from lands alone—
All rights and hopes must centre in the throne:
Law-tithes for prayer—their souls were not their own!
Then o'er the brim the bitter waters welled;
The mind protested and the soul rebelled.
And yet, how deep the bowl, how slight the flow!
A few brave exiles from their country go;
A few strong souls whose rich affections cling,
Though cursed by clerics, hunted by the king.
Their last sad vision on the Grimsby strand
Their wives and children kneeling on the sand.
Then twelve slow years in Holland—changing years—
Strange ways of life—strange voices in their ears;
The growing children learning foreign speech;
And growing, too, within the heart of each
A thought of further exile—of a home
In some far land—a home for life and death
By their hands built, in equity and faith.
And then the preparation—the heart-beat
Of wayfarers who may not rest their feet;
Their Pastor's blessing—the farewells of some
'Who stayed in Leyden. Then the sea's wide blue!—
'They sailed,' writ one,' and as they sailed they knew
That they were Pilgrims!'
On the wintry main
Grod flings their lives as farmers scatter grain.
His breath propels the winged seed afloat;
His tempests swerve to spare the fragile boat;
Before His prompting terrors disappear;
He points the way while patient seamen steer;
Till port is reached, nor North, nor South, but HERE!
Here, where the shore was rugged as the waves,
'Where frozen nature dumb and leafless lay,
And no rich meadows bade the Pilgrims stay,
'Was spread the symbol of the life that saves:
To conquer first the outer things; to make
Their own advantage, unallied, unbound;
Their blood the mortar, building from the ground;
Their cares the statutes, making all anew;
To learn to trust the many, not the few;
To bend the mind to discipline; to break
The bonds of old convention, and forget
The claims and barriers of class; to face
A desert land, a strange and hostile race,
And conquer both to friendship by the debt
That Nature pays to justice, love, and toil.
Here, on this rock, and on this sterile soil,
Began the kingdom not of kings, but men:
Began the making of the world again.
Here centuries sank, and from the hither brink
A new world reached and raised an old-world link,
When English hands, by wider vision taught,
Threw down the feudal bars the Normans brought,
And here revived, in spite of sword and stake,
Their ancient freedom of the Wapentake!
Here struck the seed—the Pilgrims' roofless town,
Where equal rights and equal bonds were set,
Where all the people equal-franchised met;
Where doom was writ of privilege and crown;
Where human breath blew all the idols down;
Where crests were nought, where vulture flags were furled,
And common men began to own the world!
All praise to others of the vanguard then!
To Spain, to France; to Baltimore and Penn;
To Jesuit, Quaker,—Puritan and Priest;
Their toil be crowned—their honors be increased!
We slight no true devotion, steal no fame
From other shrines to gild the Pilgrims' name.
As time selects, we judge their treasures heaped;
Their deep foundations laid; their harvests reaped;
Their primal mode of liberty; their rules
Of civil right; their churches, courts, and schools;
Their freedom's very secret here laid down,—
The spring of government is the little town!
They knew that streams must follow to a spring;
And no stream flows from township to a king.
Give praise to others, early-come or late,
For love and labor on our ship of state;
But this must stand, above all fame and zeal:
The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel.
On their strong lines we base our social health,—
The man—the home—the town—the commonwealth!
Unconscious builders? Yea: the conscious fail!
Design is impotent if Nature frown.
No deathless pile has grown from intellect.
Immortal things have God for architect,
And men are but the granite He lays down.
Unconscious? Yea! They thought it might avail
To build a gloomy creed about their lives,
To shut out all dissent; but naught survives
Of their poor structure; and we know to-day
Their mission was less pastoral than lay—
More Nation-seed than Gospel-seed were they!
The Faith was theirs: the time had other needs.
The salt they bore must sweeten worldly deeds.
There was a meaning in the very wind
That blew them here so few, so poor, so strong,
To grapple concrete work, not abstract wrong.
Their saintly Robinson was left behind
To teach by gentle memory; to shame
The bigot spirit and the word of flame;
To write dear mercy in the Pilgrims' law;
To lead to that wide faith his soul foresaw,—
That no rejected race in darkness delves;
There are no Gentiles, but they make themselves;
That men are one of blood and one of spirit;
That one is as the whole, and all inherit!
On all the story of a life or race,
The blessing of a good man leaves its trace.
Their Pastor's word at Leyden here sufficed:
'But follow me as I have followed Christ!'
And, 'I believe there is more truth to come!'
O gentle soul, what future age shall sum
The sweet incentive of thy tender word!
Thy sigh to hear of conquest by the sword:
'How happy to convert, and not to slay! '
When valiant Standish killed the chief at bay.
To such as thee the Fathers owe their fame;
The Nation owes a temple to thy name.
Thy teaching made the Pilgrims kindly, free,—
All that the later Puritans should be.
Thy pious instinct marks their destiny.
Thy love won more than force or arts adroit—
It writ and kept the deed with Massasoit;
It earned the welcome Samoset expressed;
It lived again in Eliot's loving breast;
It filled the Compact which the Pilgrims signed—
Immortal scroll! the first where men combined
From one deep lake of common blood to draw
All rulers, rights, and potencies of law.
When waves of ages have their motive spent
Thy sermon preaches in this Monument,
Where Virtue, Courage, Law, and Learning sit;
Calm Faith above them, grasping Holy Writ;
White hand upraised o'er beauteous, trusting eyes,
And pleading finger pointing to the skies!
The past is theirs—the future ours; and we
Must learn and teach. Oh, may our record be
Like theirs, a glory, symbolled in a stone,
To speak as this speaks, of our labors done.
They had no model; but they left us one.
Severe they were; but let him cast the stone
Who Christ's dear love dare measure with his own.
Their strict professions were not cant nor pride.
Who calls them narrow, let his soul be wide!
Austere, exclusive—ay, but with their faults,
Their golden probity mankind exalts,
They never lied in practice, peace, or strife;
They were no hypocrites; their faith was clear;
They feared too much some sins men ought to fear:
The lordly arrogance and avarice,
And vain frivolity's besotting vice;
The stern enthusiasm of their life
Impelled too far, and weighed poor nature down;
They missed God's smile, perhaps, to watch His frown.
But he who digs for faults shall resurrect
Their manly virtues born of self-respect.
How sum their merits? They were true and brave;
They broke no compact and they owned no slave;
They had no servile order, no- dumb throat;
They trusted first the universal vote;
The first were they to practice and. instill
The rule of law and not the rule of will;
They lived one noble test: who would be freed
Must give up all to follow duty's lead.
They made no revolution based on blows,
But taught one truth that all the planet knows,
That all men think of, looking on a throne—
The people may be trusted with their own!
In every land wherever might holds sway
The Pilgrims' leaven is at work to-day.
The Mayflower's cabin was the chosen womb
Of light predestined for the nations' gloom.
God grant that those who tend the sacred flame
May worthy prove of their Forefathers' name.
More light has come,—more dangers, too, perplex:
New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex.
The Fathers fled from feudal lords,, and made
A freehold state; may we not retrograde
To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade.
May we, as they did, teach in court and school,
There must be classes, but no class shall rule:
The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool.
Though vast the token of our future glory,
Though tongue of man hath told not such a story,—
Surpassing Plato's dream, More's phantasy,—still we
Have no new principles to keep us free.
As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,
The truths the Fathers taught we need again.
Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves,
With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,
And patch our moral leaks with statute law,
We cannot be protected from ourselves!
Still must we keep in every stroke and vote
The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;
Our seal their secret: LIBERTY CAN BE;
THE STATE IS FREEDOM IF THE TOWN IS FREE.
The death of nations in their work began;
They sowed the seed of federated Man.
Dead nations were but robber-holds; and we
The first battalion of Humanity!
All living nations, while our eagles shine,
One after one, shall swing into our line;
Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide
And bloodless order of their regicide;
The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand
Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.
O People's Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear;
When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know;
When artist minds in world-wide symbol show;
When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise;
When priests on grand cathedral altars praise;
When pride and arrogance shall disappear,
The Pilgrims' Vision is accomplished here!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Crispus Attucks
WHERE shall we seek for a hero, and where shall we find a story?
Our laurels are wreathed for conquest, our songs for completed glory.
But we honor a shrine unfinished, a column uncapped with pride,
If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died.
Shall we take for a sign this Negro-slave with unfamiliar name—
With his poor companions, nameless too, till their lives leaped forth in flame?
Yea, sorely, the verdict is not for us, to render or deny;
We can only interpret the symbol; God chose these men to die—
As teachers and types, that to humble lives may chief award be made;
That from lowly ones, and rejected stones, the temple's base is laid!
When the bullets leaped from the British guns, no chance decreed their aim:
Men see what the royal hirelings saw—a multitude and a flame;
But beyond the flame, a mystery; five dying men in the street,
While the streams of severed races in the well of a nation meet!
O, blood of the people! changeless tide, through century, creed and race!
Still one as the sweet salt sea is one, though tempered by sun and place;
The same in the ocean currents, and the same in the sheltered seas;
Forever the fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies;
Indian and Negro, Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Latin and Gaul—
Mere surface shadow and sunshine; while the sounding unifies all!
One love, one hope, one duty theirs! No matter the time or ken,
There never was separate heart-beat in all the races of men!
But alien is one—of class, not race—he has drawn the line for himself;
His roots drink life from inhuman soil, from garbage of pomp and pelf;
His heart beats not with the common beat, he has changed his life-stream's hue;
He deems his flesh to be finer flesh, he boasts that his blood is blue:
Patrician, aristocrat, tory—whatever his age or name,
To the people's rights and liberties, a traitor ever the same.
The natural crowd is a mob to him, their prayer a vulgar rhyme;
The freeman's speech is sedition, and the patriot's deed a crime.
Wherever the race, the law, the land,—whatever the time, or throne,
The tory is always a traitor to every class but his own.
Thank God for a land where pride is clipped, where arrogance stalks apart;
Where law and song and loathing of wrong are words of the common heart;
Where the masses honor straightforward strength, and know, when veins are bled,
That the bluest blood is putrid blood—that the people's blood is red!
And honor to Crispus Attucks, who was leader and voice that day;
The first to defy, and the first to die, with Maverick. Carr, and Gray.
Call it riot or revolution, his hand first clenched at the crown;
His feet were the first in perilous place to pull the king's flag down;
His breast was the first one rent apart that liberty's stream might flow;
For our freedom now and forever, his head was the first bid low.
Call it riot or revolution, or mob or crowd, as you may,
Such deaths have been seed of nations, such lives shall be honored for aye.
They were lawless hinds to the lackeys—but martyrs to Paul Revere;
And Otis and Hancock and Warren read spirit and meaning clear.
Ye teachers, answer: what shall be done when just men stand in the dock;
When the caitiff is robed in ermine, and his sworders keep the lock;
When torture is robbed of clemency, and guilt is without remorse;
When tiger and panther are gentler than the Christian slaver's curse;
When law is a satrap's menace, and order the drill of a horde—
Shall the people kneel to be trampled, and bare their neck to the sword?
Not so! by this Stone of Resistance that Boston raises here!
By the old North Church's lantern, and the watching of Paul Revere!
Not so! by Paris of 'Ninety-Three, and Ulster of 'NinetyEight!
By Toussaint in St. Domingo! by the horror of Delhi's gate!
By Adams's word to Hutchinson! by the tea that is brewing still!
By the farmers that met the soldiers at Concord and Bunker Hill!
Not so! not so! Till the world is done, the shadow of wrong is dread;
The crowd that bends to a lord to-day, to-morrow shall strike him dead.
There is only one thing changeless: the earth steals from under our feet,
The times and manners are passing moods, and the laws are incomplete;
There is only one thing changes not, one word that still survives—
The slave is the wretch who wields the lash, and not the man in gyves!
There is only one test of contract: is it willing, is it good?
There is only one guard of equal right: the unity of blood;
There is never a mind unchained and true that class or race allows;
There is never a law to be obeyed that reason disavows;
There is never a legal sin but grows to the law's disaster,
The master shall dropp the whip, and the slave shall enslave the master!
O, Planter of seed in thought and deed has the year of right revolved,
And brought the Negro patriot's cause with its problem to be solved?
His blood streamed first for the building, and through all the century's years,
Our growth of story and fame of glory are mixed with his blood and tears.
He lived with men like a soul condemned—derided, defamed, and mute;
Debased to the brutal level, and instructed to be a brute.
His virtue was shorn of benefit, his industry of reward;
His love!—O men, it were mercy to have cut affection's cord;
Through the night of his woe, no pity save that of his fellow-slave;
For the wage of his priceless labor, the scourging block and the grave!
And now, is the tree to blossom? Is the bowl of agony filled?
Shall the price be paid, and the honor said, and the word of outrage stilled?
And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul?
Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole?
That nothing is told while the clinging sin remains part unconfessed?
That the health of the nation is periled if one man be oppressed?
Has he learned—the slave from the rice-swamps, whose children were sold—has he,
With broken chains on his limbs, and the cry in his blood, 'I am free!'
Has he learned through affliction's teaching what our Crispus Attucks knew—
When Right is stricken, the white and black are counted as one, not two?
Has he learned that his century of grief was worth a thousand years
In blending his life and blood with ours, and that all his toils and tears
Were heaped and poured on him suddenly, to give him a right to stand
From the gloom of African forests, in the blaze of the freest land?
That his hundred years have earned for him a place in the human van
Which others have fought for and thought for since the world of wrong began?
For this, shall his vengeance change to love, and his retribution burn,
Defending the right, the weak and the poor, when each shall have his turn;
For this, shall he set his woeful past afloat on the stream of night;
For this, he forgets as we all forget when darkness turns to light;
For this, he forgives as we all forgive when wrong has changed to right.
And so, must we come to the learning of Boston's lesson to-day;
The moral that Crispus Attucks taught in the old heroic way;
God made mankind to be one in blood, as one in spirit and thought;
And so great a boon, by a brave man's death, is never dearly bought!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Three Queens
IN the far time of Earth's sweet maiden beauty,
When Morning hung with rapture on her breast;
When every sentient life paid love for duty,
And every law was Nature's own behest;
When reason ruled as subtle instinct taught her;
When joys were pure and sin and shame unseen;
Then God sent down His messenger and daughter,
His kiss upon her lips, to reign as Queen!
Her name was Liberty! Earth lay before her,
And throbbed unconscious fealty and truth;
Morning and night men hastened to adore her,
And from her eyes Peace drew perennial youth.
Her hair was golden as the stars of heaven;
Her face was radiant with the kiss of Jove;
Her form was lovelier than the sun at even;
Death paled before her: Life was one with Love.
O time traditioned! ere thy dismal sequel,
Men owned the world, and every man was free;
The lowest life was noble; all were equal
In needs and creeds,—their birthright Liberty.
Possession had no power of caste, nor learning;
He was not great who owned a shining stone;
No seer was needed for the truth's discerning,
Nor king nor code to teach the world its own.
Distinction lived, but gave no power o'er others,
As flowers have no dominion each o'er each;
What men could do they did among their brothers
By skill of hand or gift of song or speech.
Dear Golden Age! that like a deathless spirit
Fills our traditions with a light sublime;
Like wheat from Egypt's tombs our souls inherit
Sweet dreams of freedom from thy vanished time.
O Goddess Liberty! thy sun was cleaving
Its golden path across a perfect sky,
When lo! a cloud, from night below upheaving,
And underneath a shadow and a cry!
In lurid darkness spread the thing of error,
Swift ran the shudder and the fear beneath;
Till o'er the Queen's face passed the voiceless terror,
And Love grew pale to see the joy of Death.
Men stood benumbed to wait unknown disaster;
Full soon its sworded Messenger was seen;
'Behold!' he cried, 'the weak shall have a master!
The Strong shall rule! There reigns another Queen!''
Then rushed the forces of the night-born Power,
And seized white Liberty, and cast her down;
Man's plundered birthright was the new Queen's dower,
The sorrow of the weak ones was her crown.
Her name was Law! She sent her proclamation
Through every land and set her crimson seal
On every strangled right and revocation
Of aim and instinct of the common weal.
She saw the true Queen prisoned by her creatures;
Who dared to speak, was slain by her command.
Her face was lusterless. With smileless features
She took the throne—a weapon in her hand!
Her new code read: 'The earth is for the able'
(And able meant the selfish, strong, and shrewd):
'Equality and freedom are a fable;
To take and keep the largest share is good.'
Her teachers taught the justice of oppression,
That taxed the poor on all but air and sun;
Her preachers preached the gospel of possession,
That hoards had rights while human souls had none.
Then all things changed their object and relation;
Commerce instead of Nature—Progress instead of Men;
The world became a monstrous corporation,
Where ninety serfs ground luxury for ten.
The masters blessed, the toilers cursed the system
That classified and kept mankind apart;
But passing ages rained the dust of custom
Where broken Nature showed the weld of art.
But there were some who scorned to make alliance,
Who owned the true Queen even in the dust;
And these, through generations, flung defiance
From goal and gibbet for their sacred trust.
Then came the Christ, the Saviour and the Brother,
With truth and freedom once again the seed;
'Woe to the rich! Do ye to one another
As each desires for self '—man's primal creed.
But, lo! they took the Saviour and they bound him,
And set him in their midst as he were free;
They made His tied hands seal their deeds around Him,
And His dumb lips condemn fair Liberty!
'Then woe!' cried those faint-hearted; 'woe for dreaming,
For prayers and hopes and sufferings all in vain!'
O Souls despondent at the outward seeming,
Here at the cry, behold the light again!
Here at the cry, the answer and solution:
When strong as Death the cold usurper reigns,
When human right seems doomed to dissolution,
And Hope itself is wrung with mortal pains;
When Christ is harnessed to the landlord's burden;
His truth to make men free a thing of scorn;
God hears the cry, and sends the mystic guerdon,—
Earth thrills and throes—another Queen is born!
O weak she comes, a child and not a woman;
Needing our nursing and devotion long;
But in her eyes the flame divine and human,
To strengthen weak ones and restrain the strong.
Her name is Learning! Her domain unbounded;
Of all the fetters she commands the key;
Through her babe-mouth man's wrong shall be confounded,
And link by link her sister Queen set free.
Her hand shall hold the patriotic passes,
And check the wrong that zeal would do for right;
Her whispered secrets shall inflame the masses
To read their planet-charter by her light.
Round her to-day may press the base Queen's minions,
Seeking alliance and approval. Nay!
The day and night shall mingle their dominions
Ere Nature's rule and Mammon's join their sway.
Our new Queen comes a nursling, thus to teach us
The patience and the tenderness we need:
To raise our natures that the light may reach us
Of sacrifice and silence for a creed.
A nursling yet,—but every school and college
Is training minds to tend the heavenly maid;
And men are learning, grain by grain, the knowledge
That worlds exist for higher ends than trade.
Grander than Vulcan's are these mighty forges
Where souls are shaped and sharped like fiery swords,
To arm the multitude till Might disgorges,
And save the Saviour from the selfish hordes.
Around us here we count those Pharos stations,
Where men are bred to do their Queen's behest:
To guard the deep republican foundations
Of our majestic freedom of the West!
From our high place the broken view grows clearer,
The bloodstained upward path the patriots trod;
Shall we not reach to bring the toilers nearer
The law of Nature, Liberty, and God?
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Pilgrim Song
Written for the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of Pennsylvania
Pilgrims of the trackless deep,
Leaving all, our fathers came,
Life and liberty to keep
In Jehovah's awful name.
Neither pillared flame nor cloud
Made the wild, for them, rejoice,
But their hearts, with sorrow bowed,
In the darkness heard His voice.
Things above them they divined—
Thoughts of God, forever true,
And the deathless Compact signed—
Building better than they knew:
Building liberty not planned,
Law that ampler life controls,
All the greatness of our land
Lying shadowed in their souls.
In the days that shall succeed,
Prouder boast no time shall grant
Than to be of them, indeed,
Children of their Covenant:
Children of the promised day,
Bound by hope and memory,
Brave, devoted, wise, as they—
Strong with love's humility.
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Mine and Thine (1904)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Liberty Lighting the World
MAJESTIC warder by the Nation's gate,
Spike-crowned, flame-armed like Agony or Glory,
Holding the tablets of some unknown law,
With gesture eloquent and mute as Fate,—
We stand about thy feet in solemn awe,
Like desert-tribes who seek their Sphinx's story,
And question thee in spirit and in speech:
What art thou? Whence? What comest thou to teach?
What vision hold those introverted eyes
Of Revolutions framed in centuries?
Thy flame — what threat, or guide for sacred way?
Thy tablet — what commandment? What Sinai?
Lo! as the waves make murmur at thy base,
We watch the somber grandeur of thy face,
And ask thee—what thou art.
I am Liberty,—God's daughter!
My symbols—a law and a torch;
Not a sword to threaten slaughter,
Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch;
But a light that the world may see,
And a truth that shall make men free.
I am the sister of Duty,
And I am the sister of Faith;
To-day, adored for my beauty,
To-morrow, led forth to death.
I am she whom ages prayed for;
Heroes suffered undismayed for;
Whom the martyrs were betrayed for!
I am a herald republican from a land grown free under feet of kings;
My radiance, lighting a century's span, a sister's love to Columbia brings.
I am a beacon to ships at sea, and a warning to watchers ashore;
In palace and prairie and street, through me, shall be heard the ominous ocean-roar.
I am a threat to oppression's sin, and a pharos-light to the weak endeavor;
Mine is the love that men may win, but lost—it is lost forever!
Mine are the lovers who deepest pain, with weapon and word still wounding sore;
With sanguined hands they caress and chain, and crown and trample—and still adore!
Cities have flamed in my name, and Death has reaped wild harvest of joy and peace,
Till mine is a voice that stills the breath, my advent an omen that love shall cease!
In My name, timid ones crazed with terror! In My name, Law with a scourging rod!
In My name, Anarchy, Cruelty, Error! I, who am Liberty,—daughter of God!—
Peace! Be still! See my torch uplifted,—
Heedless of Passion or Mammon's cause!
Round my feet are the ages drifted,
Under mine eyes are the rulers sifted,—
Ever, forever, my changeless laws!
I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me;
Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free.
One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be won?
Freedom is more than a resolution—he is not free who is free alone.
Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the circling sun;
Evil recedes from the spirit's proving as mist from the hollows when night is done.
I am the test, O silent toilers, holding the scales of error and truth;
Proving the heritage held by spoilers from hard hands empty, and wasted youth.
Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights, and the rights are won;
Wrong shall die with the understanding—one truth clear and the work is done.
Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety enslaved for ten;
My word shall stand against mart and college: THE PLANET BELONGS TO ITS LIVING MEN!
And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a kindly shore,
I am Liberty! patient, deathless—set by Love at the Nation's door.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Freedom's Plow
When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
The eyes see there materials for building,
See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.
A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!
With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
Freedom.
Down into the earth went the plow
In the free hands and the slave hands,
In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.
Labor! Out of labor came villages
And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it’s Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now it’s the U.S.A.
A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL--
ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS--
AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
And silently too for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.
It was a long time ago,
But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT THAT OTHER’S CONSENT.
There were slaves then, too,
But in their hearts the slaves knew
What he said must be meant for every human being-
Else it had no meaning for anyone.
Then a man said:
BETTER TO DIE FREE
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.
With John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Negroes died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
"Or if it would," thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
Out of war it came, bloody and terrible!
But it came!
Some there were, as always,
Who doubted that the war would end right,
That the slaves would be free,
Or that the union would stand,
But now we know how it all came out.
Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
We know now how it came out.
There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
There was a great wooded land,
And men united as a nation.
America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises-that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
"You are a man. Together we are building our land."
America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don’t be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don’t be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Woven from the beginning
Into the warp and woof of America:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
BETTER DIE FREE,
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
FREEDOM!
BROTHERHOOD!
DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:
We say, NO!
A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!
poem by Langston Hughes
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The Press Evangel
GOD'S order, 'Light!' when all was void and dark
Brought mornless noon, a flame without a spark.
A gift unearned, that none may hold or hide,
An outer glory, not an inner guide;
But flamed no star in heaven to light the soul
And lead the wayward thought toward Freedom's goal.
O Wasted ages! Whither have ye led
The breeding masses for their daily bread?
Engendered serfs, across a world of gloom,
The wavelike generations reach the tomb.
Masters and lords, they feared a lord's decree,
Nor freedom knew nor truth to make them free.
But hark! A sound has reached the servile herd!
Strong brows are raised to catch the passing word;
From mouth to mouth a common whisper flies;
A wild fire message burns on lips and eyes;
Far-off and near the kindred tidings throng—
How hopes come true, how heroes challenge wrong;
How men have rights above all law's decrees;
How weak ones rise and sweep the thrones like seas!
Behold! The people listen—question! Then
The inner light has come—the boors are men!
What read ye here—a dreamer's idle rule?
A swelling pedant's lesson for a school?
Nay, here no dreaming, no delusive charts;
But common interests for common hearts;
A truth, a Principle—beneath the sun
One vibrant throb—men's rights and wrongs are one.
One heart's small keyboard touches all the notes;
One weak one's cry distends the million throats;
Nor race nor nation bounds the human kind—
White, yellow, black—one conscience and one mind!
How spread the doctrine I See the teachers fly—
The printed messages across the sky;
From land to land, as never birds could wing;
With songs of promise birds could never sing;
With mighty meanings clearing here and there;
With nations' greetings kings could never share;
With new communions whispering near and far;
With gathering armies bent on peace, not war;
With kindly judges reading righteous laws;
With strength and cheer for every struggling cause.
Roll on, O cylinders of light, and teach
The helpless myriads tongue can never reach.
Make men, not masses: pulp and mud unite—
The single grain of sand reflects the light.
True freedom makes the individual free;
And common law for all makes Liberty!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Robinson Of Leyden
HE sleeps not here; in hope and prayer
His wandering flock had gone before,
But he, the shepherd, might not share
Their sorrows on the wintry shore.
Before the Speedwell's anchor swung,
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,
While round his feet the Pilgrims clung,
The pastor spake, and thus he said:--
'Men, brethren, sisters, children dear!
God calls you hence from over sea;
Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer,
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.
'Ye go to bear the saving word
To tribes unnamed and shores untrod;
Heed well the lessons ye have heard
From those old teachers taught of God.
'Yet think not unto them was lent
All light for all the coming days,
And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent
In making straight the ancient ways;
'The living fountain overflows
For every flock, for every lamb,
Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose
With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam.'
He spake; with lingering, long embrace,
With tears of love and partings fond,
They floated down the creeping Maas,
Along the isle of Ysselmond.
They passed the frowning towers of Briel,
The 'Hook of Holland's' shelf of sand,
And grated soon with lifting keel
The sullen shores of Fatherland.
No home for these!--too well they knew
The mitred king behind the throne;--
The sails were set, the pennons flew,
And westward ho! for worlds unknown.
And these were they who gave us birth,
The Pilgrims of the sunset wave,
Who won for us this virgin earth,
And freedom with the soil they gave.
The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,--
In alien earth the exiles lie,--
Their nameless graves our holiest shrine,
His words our noblest battle-cry!
Still cry them, and the world shall hear,
Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea!
Ye _have_ not built by Haerlem Meer,
Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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A Nation's Test
I.
A NATION'S greatness lies in men, not acres;
One master-mind is worth a million hands.
No royal robes have marked the planet-shakers,
But Samson-strength to burst the ages' bands.
The might of empire gives no crown supernal—
Athens is here—but where is Macedon?
A dozen lives make Greece and Rome eternal,
And England's fame might safely rest on one.
Here test and text are drawn from Nature's preaching:
Afric and Asia—half the rounded earth—
In teeming lives the solemn truth are teaching,
That insect-millions may have human birth.
Sun-kissed and fruitful, every clod is breeding
A petty life, too small to reach the eye:
So must it be, with no man thinking, leading,
The generations creep their course and die.
Hapless the lands, and doomed amid the races,
That give no answer to this royal test;
Their toiling tribes will droop ignoble faces,
Till earth in pity takes them back to rest.
A vast monotony may not be evil,
But God's light tells us it cannot be good;
Valley and hill have beauty—but the level
Must bear a shadeless and a stagnant brood.
II.
I bring the touchstone. Motherland, to thee,
And test thee trembling, fearing thou shouldst fail;
If fruitless, sonless, thou wert proved to be,
Ah, what would love and memory avail?
Brave land! God has blest thee!
Thy strong heart I feel,
As I touch thee and test thee—
Dear land! As the steel
To the magnet flies upward, so rises thy breast,
With a motherly pride to the touch of the test.
III.
See! she smiles beneath the touchstone, looking on her distant youth,
Looking down her line of leaders and of workers for the truth.
Ere the Teuton, Norseman, Briton, left the primal woodland spring,
When their rule was might and rapine, and their law a painted king;
When the sun of art and learning still was in the Orient;
When the pride of Babylonia under Cyrus' hand was shent;
When the sphinx's introverted eye turned fresh from Egypt's guilt;
When the Persian bowed to Athens; when the Parthenon was built;
When the Macedonian climax closed the Commonwealths of Greece;
When the wrath of Roman manhood burst on Tarquin for Lucrece—
Then was Erin rich in knowledge—thence from out her Ollamh's store—
Kenned to-day by students only—grew her ancient Senchus More;
Then were reared her mighty builders, who made temples to the sun—
There they stand—the old Round Towers—showing how their work was done:
Thrice a thousand years upon them—shaming all our later art—
Warning fingers raised to tell us we must build with rev’'rent heart.
Ah, we call thee Mother Erin! Mother thou in right of years;
Mother in the large fruition—mother in the joys and tears.
All thy life has been a symbol — we can only read a part:
God will flood thee ,yet with sunshine for the woes that drench thy heart.
All thy life has been symbolic of a human mother's life:
Youth's sweet hopes and dreams have vanished, and the travail and the strife
Are upon thee in the present; but thy work until to-day
Still has been for truth and manhood—and it shall not pass away:
Justice lives, though judgment lingers—angels' feet are heavy shod—
But a planet's years are moments in th' eternal day of God!
IV.
Out from the valley of death and tears,
From the war and want of a thousand years,
From the mark of sword and the rust of chain,
From the smoke and blood of the penal laws,
The Irishmen and the Irish cause
Come out in the front of the field again!
What says the stranger to such a vitality?
What says the statesman to this nationality?
Flung on the shore of a sea of defeat,
Hardly the swimmers have sprung to their feet,
When the nations are thrilled by a clarion-word,
And Burke, the philosopher-statesman, is heard.
When shall his equal be? Down from the stellar height
Sees he the planet and all on its girth—
India, Columbia, and Europe—his eagle-sight
Sweeps at a glance all the wrong upon earth.
Races or sects were to him a profanity:
Hindoo and Negro and Kelt were as one;
Large as mankind was his splendid humanity,
Large in its record the work he has done.
V.
What need to mention men of minor note,
When there be minds that all the heights attain?
What school-boy knoweth not the hand that wrote
'Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain'
What man that speaketh English e'er can lift
His voice 'mid scholars, who hath missed the lore
Of Berkeley, Curran, Sheridan, and Swift,
The art of Foley and the songs of Moore?
Grattan and Flood and Emmet—where is he
That hath not learned respect for such as
Who loveth humor, and hath yet to see
Lover and Prout and Lever and Maclise?
VI.
Great men grow greater by the lapse of time:
We know those least whom we have seen the latest;
And they, 'mongst those whose names have grown sublime,
Who worked for Human Liberty, are greatest.
And now for one who allied will to work,
And thought to act, and burning speech to thought;
Who gained the prizes that were seen by Burke—
Burke felt the wrong—O'Council felt, and fought.
Ever the same—from boyhood up to death:
His race was crushed—his people were defamed;
He found the spark, and fanned it with his breath,
And fed the fire, till all the nation flamed!
He roused the farms—he made the serf a yeoman;
He drilled his millions and he faced the foe;
But not with lead or steel he struck the foeman:
Reason the sword—and human right the blow.
He fought for home—but no land-limit bounded
O'Connell's faith, nor curbed his sympathies;
All wrong to liberty must be confounded,
Till men were chainless as the winds and seas.
He fought for faith—but with no narrow spirit;
With ceaseless hand the bigot laws he smote;
One chart, he said, all mankind should inherit,—
The right to worship and the right to vote.
Always the same—but yet a glinting prism:
In wit, law, statecraft, still a master-hand;
An 'uncrowned king,' whose people's love was chrism;
His title—Liberator of his Land!
'His heart's in Rome, his spirit is in heaven'—
So runs the old song that his people sing;
A tall Round Tower they builded in Glasnevin—
Fit Irish headstone for an Irish king!
VII.
Oh Motherland! there is no cause to doubt thee:
Thy mark is left on every shore to-day.
Though grief and wrong may cling like robes about thee,
Thy motherhood will keep thee queen alway.
In faith and patience working, and believing
Not power alone can make a noble state:
Whate'er the land, though all things else conceiving,
Unless it breed great men, it is not great.
Go on, dear land, and midst the generations
Send out strong men to cry the word aloud;
Thy niche is empty still amidst the nations—
Go on in faith, and God must raise the cloud.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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PSALM 105 Abridged
God's conduct of Israel, and the plagues of Egypt.
Give thanks to God, invoke his name,
And tell the world his grace;
Sound through the earth his deeds of fame,
That all may seek his face.
His cov'nant, which he kept in mind
For num'rous ages past,
To num'rous ages yet behind
In equal force shall last.
He sware to Abraham and his seed,
And made the blessing sure;
Gentiles the ancient promise read,
And find his truth endure.
"Thy seed shall make all nations blest,"
(Said the Almighty voice,)
"And Canaan's land shall be their rest,
The type of heav'nly joys."
[How large the grant! how rich the grace,
To give them Canaan's land,
When they were strangers in the place,
A little feeble band!
Like pilgrims through the countries round
Securely they removed;
And haughty kings that on them frowned
Severely he reproved.
"Touch mine anointed, and my arm
Shall soon revenge the wrong:
The man that does my prophets harm,
Shall know their God is strong."
Then let the world forbear its rage,
Nor put the church in fear;
Isr'el must live through every age,
And be th' Almighty's care.]
PAUSE I.
When Pharaoh dared to vex the saints,
And thus provoked their God,
Moses was sent at their complaints,
Armed with his dreadful rod.
He called for darkness; darkness came
Like an o'erwhelming flood;
He turned each lake and every stream
To lakes and streams of blood.
He gave the sign, and noisome flies
Through the whole country spread;
And frogs in croaking armies rise
About the monarch's bed.
Through fields, and towns, and palaces,
The tenfold vengeance flew;
Locusts in swarms devoured their trees,
And hail their cattle slew.
Then by an angel's midnight stroke
The flower of Egypt died;
The strength of every house was broke,
Their glory and their pride.
Now let the world forbear its rage,
Nor put the church in fear;
Isr'el must live through every age,
And be th' Almighty's care.
PAUSE II.
Thus were the tribes from bondage brought,
And left the hated ground;
Each some Egyptian spoils had got,
And not one feeble found.
The Lord himself chose out their way,
And marked their journeys right;
Gave them a leading cloud by day,
A fiery guide by night.
They thirst, and waters from the rock
In rich abundance flow;
And following still the course they took,
Ran all the desert through.
O wondrous stream! O blessed type
Of ever-flowing grace!
So Christ, our Rock, maintains our life
Through all this wilderness.
Thus guarded by th' Almighty hand,
The chosen tribes possessed
Canaan, the rich, the promised land,
And there enjoyed their rest.
Then let the world forbear its rage,
The church renounce her fear;
Isr'el must live through every age,
And be th' Almighty's care.
poem by Isaac Watts
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Ireland - 1882
'ISLAND of Destiny! Innisfail!' they cried, when their weary eyes
First looked on thy beauteous bosom from the amorous, ocean rise.
'Island of Destiny! Innisfail!' we cry. dear land, to thee,
As the sun of thy future rises and reddens the western sea!
Pregnant as earth with its gold and gems and its metals strong and fine,
Is thy soul with its ardors and fancies and sympathies divine.
Mustard seed of the nations! they scattered thy leaves to the air,
But the ravisher pales at the harvest that flourishes everywhere.
Queen in the right of thy courage! manacled, scourged, defamed,
Thy voice in the teeth of the bayonets the right of a race proclaimed.
'Bah!' they sneered from their battlements, 'her people cannot unite;
They are sands of the sea, that break before the rush of our ordered might!'
And wherever the flag of the pirate flew, the English slur was heard,
And the shallow of soul re-echoed the boast of the taunting word.
But we—O sun, that of old was our god, we look in thy face to-day,
As our Druids who prayed in the ancient time, and with them we proudly say:
'We have wronged no race, we have robbed no land, we have never oppressed the weak!'
And this in the face of Heaven is the nobler thing to speak.
We can never unite—thank God for that! in such unity as yours,
That strangles the rights of others, and only itself endures
As the guard of a bloodstained spoil and the red-eyed watch of the slave;
No need for such robber-union to a race free-souled and brave.
The races that band for plunder are the mud of the human stream,
The base and the coward and sordid, without an unselfish gleam.
It is mud that unites; but the sand is free—ay, every grain is free,
And the freedom of individual men is the highest of liberty.
It is mud that coheres; but the sand is free, till the lightning smite the shore,
And smelt the grains to a crystal mass, to return to sand no more.
And so with the grains of our Irish sand, that flash cleareyed to the sun,
Till a noble Purpose smites them and melts them into one.
While the sands are free, O Tyrants! like the wind are your steel and speech;
Your brute-force crushes a legion, but a soul it can never reach.
Island of Destiny! Innisfail? for thy faith is the payment near:
The mine of the future is opened, and the golden veins appear.
Thy hands are white and thy page unstained. Reach out for the glorious years,
And take them from Grod as His recompense for thy fortitude and tears.
Thou canst stand by the way ascending, as thy tyrant goes to the base:
The seeds of her death are in her and the signs in her cruel face.
On her darkened path lie the corpses of men, with whose blood her feet are red;
And the curses of ruined nations are a cloud above her head.
O Erin, fresh in the latest day, like a gem from a Syrian tomb,
The burial clay of the centuries has saved thy light in the gloom.
Thy hands may stretch to a kindred world: there is none that hates but one;
And she but hates as a pretext for the rapine she has done.
The night of thy grief is closing, and the sky in the East is red:
Thy children watch from the mountain-tops for the sun to kiss thy head.
O Mother of men that are fit to be free, for their test for freedom borne,
Thy vacant place in the Nations' race awaits but the coming morn!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Building Of The Temple
(An Anthem Heard In Canterbury Cathedral)
[The Organ]
O Lord our God, we are strangers before Thee, and sojourners, as were
all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is
none abiding.
O Lord God of our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of
the thoughts of Thy people, and prepare their heart unto Thee.
And give unto Solomon my son a perfect heart to keep Thy commandments,
and to build the palace for the which I have made provision.
[Boys' voices.]
O come to the Palace of Life,
Let us build it again.
It was founded on terror and strife,
It was laid in the curse of the womb,
And pillared on toil and pain,
And hung with veils of doom,
And vaulted with the darkness of the tomb.
[Men's voices.]
O Lord our God, we are sojourners here for a day,
Strangers and sojourners, as all our fathers were:
Our years on the earth are a shadow that fadeth away;
Grant us light for our labour, and a time for prayer.
[Boys.]
But now with endless song,
And joy fulfilling the Law;
Of passion as pure as strong
And pleasure undimmed of awe;
With garners of wine and grain
Laid up for the ages long,
Let us build the Palace again
And enter with endless song,
Enter and dwell secure, forgetting the years of wrong.
[Men.]
O Lord our God, we are strangers and sojourners here,
Our beginning was night, and our end is hid in Thee:
Our labour on the earth is hope redeeming fear,
In sorrow we build for the days we shall not see.
[Boys.]
Great is the name
Of the strong and skilled,
Lasting the fame
Of them that build:
The tongues of many nations
Shall speak of our praise,
And far generations
Be glad for our days.
[Men.]
We are sojourners here as all our fathers were,
As all our children shall be, forgetting and forgot:
The fame of man is a murmur that passeth on the air,
We perish indeed if Thou remember not.
We are sojourners here as all our fathers were,
Strangers travelling down to the land of death:
There is neither work nor device nor knowledge there,
O grant us might for our labour, and to rest in faith.
[Boys.]
In joy, in the joy of the light to be,
[Men.]
O Father of Lights, unvarying and true,
[Boys.]
Let us build the Palace of Life anew.
[Men.]
Let us build for the years we shall not see.
[Boys.]
Lofty of line and glorious of hue,
With gold and pearl and with the cedar tree,
[Men.]
With silence due
And with service free,
[Boys.]
Let us build it for ever in splendour new.
[Men.]
Let us build in hope and in sorrow, and rest in Thee.
poem by Sir Henry Newbolt
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Wendell Phillips
WHAT shall we mourn? For the prostrate tree that sheltered the young green wood?
For the fallen cliff that fronted the sea, and guarded the fields from the flood?
For the eagle that died in the tempest, afar from its eyrie's brood?
Nay, not for these shall we weep; for the silver cord must be worn,
And the golden fillet shrink back at last, and the dust to its earth return;
And tears are never for those who die with their face to the duty done;
But we mourn for the fledglings left on the waste, and the fields where the wild waves run.
From the midst of the flock he defended, the brave one has gone to his rest;
And the tears of the poor he befriended their wealth of affliction attest.
From the midst of the people is stricken a symbol they daily saw,
Set over against the law books, of a Higher than Human Law;
For his life was a ceaseless protest, and his voice was a prophet's cry
To be true to the Truth and faithful, though the world were arrayed for the Lie.
From the hearing of those who hated, a threatening voice has past;
But the lives of those who believe and die are not blown like a leaf on the blast.
A sower of infinite seed was he, a woodman that hewed toward the light,
Who dared to be traitor to Union when Union was traitor to Right!
' Fanatic! ' the insects hissed, till he taught them to understand
That the highest crime may be written in the highest law of the land.
'Disturber' and 'Dreamer' the Philistines cried when he preached an ideal creed,
Till they learned that the men who have changed the world with the world have disagreed;
That the remnant is right, when the masses are led like sheep to the pen;
For the instinct of equity slumbers till roused by instinctive men.
It is not enough to win rights from a king and write them down in a book.
New men, new lights; and the fathers' code the sons may never brook.
What is liberty now were license then: their freedom oar yoke would be;
And each new decade must have new men to determine its liberty.
Mankind is a marching army, with a broadening front the while:
Shall it crowd its bulk on the farm-paths, or clear to the outward file?
Its pioneers are the dreamers who fear neither tongue nor pen
Of the human spiders whose silk is wove from the lives of toiling men.
Come, brothers, here to the burial! But weep not, rather rejoice,
For his fearless life and his fearless death; for his true, unequalled voice,
Like a silver trumpet sounding the note of human right;
For his brave heart always ready to enter the weak one's fight;
For his soul unmoved by the mob's wild shout or the social sneer's disgrace;
For his freeborn spirit that drew no line between class or creed or race.
Come, workers; here was a teacher, and the lesson he taught was good:
There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood;
There are no creeds to be outlawed, no colors of skin debarred;
Mankind is one in its rights and wrongs—one right, one hope, one guard.
By his life he taught, by his death we learn the great reformer's creed:
The right to be free, and the hope to be just, and the guard against selfish greed.
And richest of all are the unseen wreaths on his coffin-lid laid down
By the toil-stained hands of workmen—their sob, their kiss, and their crown
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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In Bohemia
I'D rather live in Bohemia than in any other land;
For only there are the values true,
And the laurels gathered in all men's view.
The prizes of traffic and state are won
By shrewdness or force or by deeds undone;
But fame is sweeter without the feud,
And the wise of Bohemia are never shrewd.
Here, pilgrims stream with a faith sublime
From every class and clime and time,
Aspiring only to be enrolled
With the names that are writ in the book of gold;
And each one bears in mind or hand
A palm of the dear Bohemian land.
The scholar first, with his book—a youth
Aflame with the glory of harvested truth;
A girl with a picture, a man with a play,
A boy with a wolf he has modeled in clay;
A smith with a marvelous hilt and sword,
A player, a king, a plowman, a lord—
And the player is king when the door is past.
The plowman is crowned, and the lord is last!
I'd rather fail in Bohemia than win in another land;
There are no titles inherited there,
No hoard or hope for the brainless heir;
No gilded dullard native born
To stare at his fellow with leaden scorn:
Bohemia has none but adopted sons;
Its limits, where Fancy's bright stream runs;
Its honors, not garnered for thrift or trade,
But for beauty and truth men's souls have made.
To the empty heart in a jeweled breast
There is value, maybe, in a purchased crest;
But the thirsty of soul soon learn to know
The moistureless froth of the social show;
The vulgar sham of the pompous feast
Where the heaviest purse is the highest priest;
The organized charity, scrimped and iced,
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ;
The smile restrained, the respectable cant,
When a friend in need is a friend in want;
Where the only aim is to keep afloat,
And a brother may drown with a cry in his throat.
Oh, I long for the glow of a kindly heart and the grasp of a friendly hand,
And I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Our Country
WE give thy natal day to hope,
O Country of our love and prayer!
Thy way is down no fatal slope,
But up to freer sun and air.
Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet
By God's grace only stronger made,
In future tasks before thee set
Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid.
The fathers sleep, but men remain
As wise, as true, and brave as they;
Why count the loss and not the gain?
The best is that we have to-day.
Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime,
Withhin thy mighty bounds transpires,
With speed defying space and time
Comes to us on the accusing wires;
While of thy wealth of noble deeds,
Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold,
The love that pleads for human needs,
The wrong redressed, but half is told!
We read each felon's chronicle,
His acts, his words, his gallows-mood;
We know the single sinner well
And not the nine and ninety good.
Yet if, on daily scandals fed,
We seem at times to doubt thy worth,
We know thee still, when all is said,
The best and dearest spot on earth.
From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where
Belted with flowers Los Angeles
Basks in the semi-tropic air,
To where Katahdin's cedar trees
Are dwarfed and bent by Northern winds,
Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled;
Alone, the rounding century finds
Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled.
A refuge for the wronged and poor,
Thy generous heart has borne the blame
That, with them, through thy open door,
The old world's evil outcasts came.
But, with thy just and equal rule,
And labor's need and breadth of lands,
Free press and rostrum, church and school,
Thy sure, if slow, transforming hands
Shall mould even them to thy design,
Making a blessing of the ban;
And Freedom's chemistry combine
The alien elements of man.
The power that broke their prison bar
And set the dusky millions free,
And welded in the flame of war
The Union fast to Liberty,
Shall if not deal with other ills,
Redress the red man's grievance, break
The Circean cup which shames and kills
And Labor full requital make?
Alone to such as fitly bear
Thy civic honors bid them fall?
And call thy daughters forth to share
The rights and duties pledged to all?
Give every child his right of school,
Merge private greed in public good,
And spare a treasury overfull
The tax upon a poor man's food?
No lack was in thy primal stock,
No weakling founders builded here;
Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock,
The Huguenot and Cavalier;
And they whose firm endurance gained
The freedom of the souls of men,
Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintained
The swordless commonwealth of Penn.
And thine shall be the power of all
To do the work which duty bids,
And make the people's council hall
As lasting as the Pyramids!
Well have thy later years made good
Thy brave-said word a century back,
The pledge of human brotherhood,
The equal claim of white and black.
That word still echoes round the world,
And all who hear it turn to thee,
And read upon thy flag unfurled
The prophecies of destiny.
Thy great world-lesson all shall learn,
The nations in thy school shall sit,
Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burn
With watch-fires from thy own uplit.
Great without seeking to be great
By fraud or conquest, rich in gold,
But richer in the large estate
Of virtue which thy children hold,
With peace that comes of purity
And strength to simple justice due,
So runs our loyal dream of thee;
God of our fathers! make it true.
O Land of lands! to thee we give
Our prayers, our hopes, our service free;
For thee thy sons shall nobly live,
And at thy need shall die for thee!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Then and Now
"Build me a nation," said the Lord.
The distant nations heard the word,
Build me a nation true and strong,
Bar out the old world's hate and wrong;
For men had traced with blood and tears
The trail of weary wasting years,
And torn and bleeding martyrs trod
Through fire and torture up to God.
While in the hollow of his hand
God hid the secret of our land,
Men warred against their fiercest foes,
And kingdoms fell and empires rose,
Till, weary of the old world strife,
Men sought for broader, freer life,
And plunged into the ocean's foam
To find another, better home.
And, like a vision fair and bright
The new world broke upon their sight.
Men grasped the prize, grew proud and strong,
And cursed the land with crime and wrong.
The Indian stood despoiled of lands,
The Negro bound with servile bands,
Oppressed through weary years of toil,
His blood and tears bedewed the soil.
Then God arose in dreadful wrath,
And judgment streamed around his path;
His hand the captive's fetters broke,
His lightnings shattered every yoke.
As Israel through the Red sea trod,
Led by the mighty hand of God,
They passed to freedom through a flood,
Whose every wave and surge was blood.
And slavery, with its crime and shame,
Went down in wrath and blood and flame
The land was billowed-o'er with graves
Where men had lived and died as slaves.
Four and thirty years -- what change since
then!
Beings once chattles now are men;
Over the gloom of slavery's night,
Has flashed the dawn of freedom's light.
To-day no mother with anguish wild
Kneels and implores that her darling child
Shall not be torn from her bleeding heart,
With its quivering tendrils rent apart.
The father may soothe his child to sleep,
And watch his slumbers calm and deep.
No tyrant's tread will disturb his rest
Where freedom dwells as a welcome guest.
His walls may be bare of pictured grace,
His fireside the lowliest place;
But the wife and children sheltered there
Are his to defend and guard with care.
Where haughty tyrants once bore rule
Are ballot-box and public school.
The old slave-pen of former days
Gives place to fanes of prayer and praise.
To-night we would bring our meed of praise
To noble friends of darker days;
The men and women crowned with light,
The true and tried in our gloomy night.
To Lundy, whose heart was early stirred
To speak for freedom an earnest word;
To Garrison, valiant, true and strong,
Whose face was as flint against our wrong.
And Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave,
A tower of strength to the outcast slave.
Earth has no marble too pure and white
To enrol his name in golden light.
Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain,
Who plead our cause with his broken chain,
And helped to hurl from his bloody seat
The curse that writhed and died at his feet.
And Governor Andrew, who, looking back,
Saw none he despised, though poor and black;
And Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen
Corroded the chains of fettered men.
To-night with greenest laurels we'll crown
North Elba's grave where sleeps John Brown,
Who made the gallows an altar high,
And showed how a brave old man could die.
And Lincoln, our martyred President,
Who returned to his God with chains he had rent.*
And Sumner, amid death's icy chill,
Leaving to Hoar his Civil Rights Bill.
And let us remember old underground,
With all her passengers northward bound,
The train that ran till it ceased to pay,
With all her dividends given away.
Nor let it be said that we have forgot
The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;
Nor her who to the world was known
By the simple name of Lucy stone.
A tribute unto a host of others
Who knew that men though black were brothers,
Who battled against our nation's sin,
Whose graves are thick whose ranks are thin.
Oh, people chastened in the fire,
To nobler, grander things aspire;
In the new era of your life,
Bring love for hate, and peace for strife;
Upon your hearts this vow record
That ye will build unto the Lord
A nobler future, true and grand,
To strengthen, crown and bless the land.
A higher freedom ye may gain
Than that which comes from a riven chain;
Freedom your native land to bless
With peace, and love and righteousness,
As dreams that are past, a tale all told,
Are the days when men were bought and sold;
Now God be praised from sea to sea,
Our flag floats o'er a country free.
poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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Coronation Poem And Prayer
The world has crowned a thousand kings:
But destiny has kept
Her weightiest hour of kingly power
To offer England's son.
The rising bell of Progress rings;
And Truths which long have slept,
Like prophets strange, predicting change,
Before Time's chariot run.
The greatest Empire of the Earth.
Old England proudly stands.
Like arteries her Colonies
Reach out from sea to sea.
She clasps all races in her girth;
Her gaze the world commands;
And far and wide where strong ships ride,
The British Flag floats free.
Oh, never since the stars began
Their round of Cosmic law,
And souls evolved in ways unsolved,
And kingdoms reached their prime
Has Destiny held out to Man
A gift so full of awe,
As England's crown which she hands down
In this stupendous time.
This is a crucial hour, when Fate
Tries Monarchs as by fire.
All rulers must be more than just-
Men starve on bread alone.
Old England's sense of right is great;
But now let her aspire
To feel more love, and build thereof
An everlasting Throne.
The dreaming East, awake at last,
Is asking 'when' and 'why';
Wait not too long nor answer wrong,
Nor in too stern a voice.
Let England profit by her past,
And with her wise reply
Rouse hearts, within her foster kin
To hope, and to rejoice.
True wealth dwells not in things we own,
But in our use of things.
Who would command a conquered land
Must conquer first its heart.
Such might as Man has never known,
And power undreamed by kings,
And boundless strength would come at length
To one who used that art.
For now has dawned the People's day:
A day of great unrest.
Nor king nor creed can still man's need
Of time and space to grow.
All lands must shape a wider way,
For this eternal quest;
And Leisure yield a larger field
Where work-worn feet may go.
The Universe is all a-thrill
With changes imminent.
The World in faith, with bated breath,
Holds free the Leader's place.
And wise is he whose heart and will
At one with Time's intent,
Shall open wide doors long denied
To mothers of the race.
On this round globe, oh, when and where
Were fitter time and scene
For Woman's soul to reach its goal
Than now in England's realm.
Was not the crown its King will wear
Made glorious by its Queen?
And who steered straight its ship of State?
Victoria at the Helm!
Kings have been kings by accident,
By favour and by force,
But right of birth and moral worth,
And Empires rich and broad
For England's King to-day are blent
Like rivers on one course.
But, ah! the light falls searching white
Down from the Throne of God.
Lord of the Earth and heavenly spheres,
Creator of all things,
Thou who hast wrought great worlds from naught,
Give strength to England's son.
Give courage to dispel those fears
That come to even kings,
And for his creed give Love's full mead;
Amen. Thy Will be done.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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At A Banquet Given To The Deputation Of The Swedish Riksdag To The Coronation, In Trondhjem, July 17
You chosen men we welcome here
From brothers near.
We welcome you to Olaf's town
That Norway's greatest mem'ries crown,
Where ancient prowess looking down
With searching gaze,
The question puts to sea and strand:
Are men now in the Northern land
Like yesterday's?
'T is well, if on the battlefield
Our 'Yes' is sealed!
'T is well, if now our strength is steeled
To grasp our fathers' sword and shield
And in life's warfare lift and wield
For God and home!
For us they fought; 't is now our call
To raise for them a temple-hall,
Fair freedom's dome.
List to the Northern spirit o'er
Our sea and shore!
Here once high thoughts in word were freed,
In homely song, in homely deed;
And ever shall the selfsame need
That spirit sing:
Heed not things trivial, foreign, new;
Alone th' eternal, Northern, true
Can harvest bring.
O brother-band, this faith so dear
Has brought us here?
The spirit of the North to free,
Our common toil and prayer shall be,
Those greater days again to see,-
As once before,
Of home and trust a message strong
To send the warring world we long
Forevermore.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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Proud Old Glory
I am the blood, I am the soul
I am the essence of liberty, so bold
I am the heart, I am the life
I am the dream and the vision, all that's right
I am the hope, I am the truth
I am the faith and the spirit of the aged and the youth
I am the warmth, I am the breath
I am the peace and the honor, life and death
I am justice, I am love
I stand for freedom, and salute our brave
I serve my country with pride
Old Glory is my name, God made this land my home
I am the proud flag of America
I am the proud flag of America.
poem by Trade Martin
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The House of the Commonwealth
We sent a word across the seas that said,
"The house is finished and the doors are wide,
Come, enter in.
A stately house it is, with tables spread,
Where men in liberty and love abide
With hearts akin.
"Behold, how high our hands have lifted it!
The soil it stands upon is pure and sweet
As are our skies.
Our title deeds in holy sweat are writ,
Not red accusing blood -- and 'neath our feet
No foeman lies."
And England, Mother England, leans her face
Upon her hand and feels her blood burn young
At what she sees:
The image here of that fair strength and grace
That made her feared and loved and sought and sung
Through centuries.
What chorus shall we lift, what song of joy,
What boom of seaward cannon, roll of drums?
The majesty of nationhood demands
A burst of royal sounds, as when a victor comes
From peril of a thousand foes;
An empire's honour saved from death
Brought home again; an added rose
Of victory upon its wreath.
In this wise men have greeted kings,
In name or fame,
But such acclaim
Were vain and emptiest of things
If love were silent, drawn apart,
And mute the People's mighty heart.
The love that ivy-like an ancient land doth cherish,
It grows not in a day, nor in a year doth perish.
But, little leaf by leaf,
It creeps along the walls and wreathes the ramparts hoary.
The sun that gives it strength -- it is a nation's glory;
The dew, a people's grief.
The love that ivy-like around a home-land lingers,
With soft embrace of breast and green, caressive fingers,
We are too young to know.
Not ours the glory-dome, the monuments and arches
At thought of which takes arms the blood, and proudly marches
Exultant o'er the foe.
Green lands undesolated
For no avengement cry;
No feud of race unsated
Leaps out again to triumph,
Leaps out again to triumph, or to die!
Attendant here to-day in heart and mind
Must be all lovers of mankind,
Attendant, too, the souls sublime --
The Prophet-souls of every clime,
Who, living, in a tyrant's time,
Yet thought and wrought and sought to break
The chains about mankind and make
A man where men had made a slave:
Who all intent to lift and save
Beheld the flag of Freedom wave
And scorned the prison or the grave;
For whom the darkness failed to mar
The vision of a world afar,
The shining of the Morning Star.
Attendant here, then, they must be,
And gathering close with eyes elate
Behold the vision of a State
Where men are equal, just, and free:
A State that hath no stain upon her,
No taint to hurt her maiden honour;
A Home where love and kindness centre;
A People's House where all may enter.
And, being entered, meet no dearth
Of welcome round a common hearth;
A People's House not built of stone,
Nor wrought by hand and brain alone,
But formed and founded on the heart;
A People's House, A People's Home,
En-isled in foam and far apart;
A People's House, where all may roam
The many rooms and be at ease;
A People's House, with tower and dome;
And over all a People's Flag --
A Flag upon the breeze.
poem by Roderic Quinn
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Reflecting On Independence
We have freedom living every day, a liberty no man can take away,
Not the rights, a nation may give, in the land that one may now live,
It is a freedom they cannot herald, a freedom apart from this world,
The freedom Christians speak of, that comes from our Lord above.
Dispensed by The Lord and Creator, to all who come to The Savior,
A freedom in our Lord Jesus Christ, granted to us for all of this life,
Once we accept Christ in our heart, God’s Liberty shall never depart,
When in Christ, you become free; God’s Liberty carries into Eternity.
A nation’s laws we have now learned, by leaders can be overturned,
When by evil, they are driven; to repeal rights men were once given.
Under assault is our Godly Faith, we receive, strictly through Grace,
We see many rights slipping away, as moral laws continue to decay.
Rights established by any nation, lack a firm and Godly Foundation,
The laws built upon shifting sand, in coming days just will not stand,
As the nation faces amoral blight, as immorality then becomes right,
With righteousness all in the past, personal freedom just will not last.
Reflecting on Independence friend, will our Personal Freedoms end?
Here, where our fathers achieved, the liberty, we as citizens received,
It is times like this we are assured, of the Freedom in Christ our Lord,
That no nation can take from us, once in Christ we have put our trust.
(Copyright ©07/2009)