Our Country

WE give thy natal day to hope,O Country of our love and prayer IThy way is down no fatal slope,But up to freer sun and air.

Tried as by furnace-fires, and yetBy God's grace only stronger made,In future tasks before thee setThou shalt not lack the old-time aid.

The fathers sleep, but men remainAs 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,Within thy mighty bounds transpires,With speed defying space and timeComes 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 wellAnd 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 whereBelted with flowers Los AngelesBasks 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 findsThy liberal soil by free hands tilled.

A refuge for the wronged and poor,Thy generous heart has borne the blameThat, 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 combineThe alien elements of man.

The power that broke their prison barAnd set the dusky millions free,And welded in the flame of warThe Union fast to Liberty,

Shall it not deal with other ills,Redress the red man's grievance, breakThe Circean cup which shames and kills,And Labor full requital make?

Alone to such as fitly bearThy civic honors bid them fall?And call thy daughters forth to shareThe rights and duties pledged to all?

Give every child his right of school,Merge private greed in public good,And spare a treasury overfullThe 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 gainedThe freedom of the souls of men,Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintainedThe swordless commonwealth of Penn.

And thine shall be the power of allTo do the work which duty bids,And make the people's council hallAs lasting as the Pyramids!

Well have thy later years made goodThy 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 unfurledThe prophecies of destiny.

Thy great world-lesson all shall learn,The nations in thy school shall sit,Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burnWith watch-fires from thy own uplit.

Great without seeking to be greatBy fraud or conquest, rich in gold,But richer in the large estateOf virtue which thy children hold,

With peace that comes of purityAnd 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 giveOur prayers, our hopes, our service free;For thee thy sons shall nobly live,And at thy need shall die for thee!