[1876]
our fathers’ God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.
Here, where of old, by...
“put up the sword!” the voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon’s roar,
O’er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o’er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through...
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach trees fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the...
[On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery.]
IT is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
...
THY 1 error, Frémont, simply was to act
A brave man’s part, without the statesman’s tact,
And, taking counsel but of common sense,
To strike at cause as well as consequence.
O, never yet since Roland wound his horn
At Roncesvalles has a blast been blown...
John Brown OF OSSAWATOMIE spake on his dying day:
“I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery’s pay;
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!”
John Brown of...
All grim and soiled and brown and tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church beneath her trembling dome
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm:
Wealth shook within his gilded home...
The South-land boasts its teeming cane,
The prairied west its heavy grain,
And sunset’s radiant gates unfold
On rising marts and sands of gold!
Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State
Is scant of soil, of limits strait;
Her yellow sands are...
Up the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,...
On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind’s steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its...
