University of Virginia Library

Victorious in her senate-house she stands,
Mighty among the nations, latest born.
Armed men stood round her cradle, violent hands
Were laid upon her, and her limbs were torn;
Yet she arose, and turned upon her foes,
And, beaten down, arose,
Grim, as who goes to meet
And grapple with Defeat,
And pull Destruction from her iron seat!
When saw the Earth another,
O valorous Daughter of imperious Mother,
Who greatly dared as thou?
Making thy land one wide Thermopylæ,
And the long leagues of sea thy Salamis,
Determined to be free
As the unscaled Heaven is,
Whose calm is in thy eyes, whose stars are on thy brow!

Thy children gathered round thee to defend,
O mother of a race of hardy sons!
Left plows to rust in the furrows, snatched their guns,
And rode hot haste as though to meet a friend,
Who might be nigh his end,
Which thou wert not, though often sore beset.
Nor did they fall in vain who fell for thee,
Nor could thy enemies, though its roots they wet
With thy best blood, destroy thy glorious tree,
That on its stem of greatness flowers late.
Hedged with sharp spines it shot up year by year,
As if the planets drew it to their sphere,
The quick earth spouting sap through all its veins.
Till of the days that wait
To see it burst in bloom not one remains,
Not so much as an hour,
For, lo, it is in flower,
Bourgeoned, full blown in an instant! Tree of trees,
The fame whereof has flown across the seas,
Whereat the elder sisters of the race
Have hastened to these walls,
These vast and populous halls,
To look on this Centurial Tree,
And to strike hands with thee,
And see thy happy millions face to face.
First comes, as nearest, an imperial dame,
Named for that king's fair daughter whom Jove bore
Through the blue billows to the Cretan shore,
Where she its queen became.
Parent of many peoples, strong and proud,
Comes Europe in her purples, peaceful here:
Her great sword sheathed, and rent the battle-cloud
Wherewith her kings surround her,
The chains that long have bound her
Concealed, though clanking loud,
As stately she draws near.
Hither Europe, great and mean,
Half a slave, and half a queen,
Hear what words are to be spoken,
What the Present doth foretoken,
Hear, and understand, and know,
As did our wiser Mother a hundred years ago.

England, our Mother's Mother! Come, and see
A greater England here! O come, and be
At home with us, your children, for there runs
The same blood in our veins as in your sons;
The same deep-seated love of Liberty
Beats in our hearts. We speak the same good tongue:
Familiar with all songs your bards have sung,
Those large men, Milton, Shakespeare, both are ours.
Come from the shadow of your minster towers,
Vast, venerable, from your storied domes,
Where Glory guards the ashes of the Great,
And your baronial halls, and cottage homes:
Hither, and learn what constitutes a State.
Not royal rulers, who inherit Power,
Which otherwise they never had attained,
Torn from the world in some disastrous hour
By violent kings, whose hands with blood were stained.
Nor dukes, nor earls, who trace their pedigrees
Through tortuous lines to some old ancestor,
Who was a yeoman then,
But who became the instrument of these,
And was ennobled, and was man no more:
Not lords, and kings—but men!
England of Sidney, Vane,
What we received from you, receive from us again!

Next come those neighbors twain,
Fair, fickle, courtly France, and sombre Spain.

Shorn of her ancient strength, but potent still,
From her great wall girt city by the Seine,
Shattered by hard beleaguerment, and wild ire
That sacked and set her palaces on fire,
Pulled down her pillared Column in disdain,
Most apt for all things ill;
From her green vineyards, ripening in the sun
On southern slopes their misted, purple blooms,
From cunning workshops, and from busy looms,
And where her princely painters ply their Art,
Artificer and Artist, both in one,
Tempter and Tempted, Syren of mankind,
Of many minds, but not the stable mind,
Keen wit and stormy heart:
With blare of trumpets and with roll of drums
She comes triumphantly—France comes!

Spain, with a grave sedateness,
That well befits her old renown and greatness,
When she put boldly forth to find a world,
Found it, and pillaged it, and with flags unfurled,
Sailed in her galleons homeward, red with blood,
But wealthy with her spoil; nor did the flood
Engulf her for her cruelties, blessed, not banned,
By him who holds the keys of Peter in his hand!
They came not to bring peace here, but a sword,
Sharp followers of the meek and loving Lord,
Whom priests and monks were riding, and still ride,
Cowls over crowns, and over all the pride
That arrogates to know the will of God,
Holding alike His sceptre and His rod,
Lighting at once the censer, and the fires
Wherein the poor wretch Heresy expires!
Te Deums then, but now—
But thou dost well to bow,
And cross thyself, and mutter Aves. We,
Who know not thy temptations, cannot know
What their punishment should be;
But Heaven adjusted vengeance long ago,
When the New World passed from thee!

Three follow. Deadly feud
Two cherished many years;
For one was held in bitter servitude,
And flouted for her tears.

But she has risen victorious, and is crowned
Among the nations, with one foe remaining,
Powerless, except in curses, and complaining,
And spiritual thunders that not now confound,
Controlling, where he can,
The consciences of the living, souls of the dead,
Vicegerent of High God in puny man;
More arrogant than She who sat of old
On her Seven Hills, where altar smokes up-curled,
Hungry for blood and gold,
Sleepless, and ever mailed and helmetèd,
Whose legions scourged the World!
Free Italy comes hither,
Bringing with her
The memory of her glorious, great dominions,
What time her eagles swept with iron pinions
Three Continents, and her conquerors came home,
Followed by fallen kings, the slaves of Rome;
The memory of her patriots and sages,
That burned like watch-fires through the long, dark ages:
Grave senators, stout captains, famous men
Who wielded sword and pen:
Tasso, Boccaccio, the stern Florentine,
With other children of her royal line,
Who govern the soul and heart
With Music, Song, and Art!

Austria, who wears the crowns of divers lands,
Snatched from pale brows in battle by red hands;
Haught mistress of old peoples, Serb and Slave,
Bohemian, Styrian, stalwart Tyrolese,
Whom now she must provoke and now appease;
From where the waters of the Danube lave
Vienna's walls, and winding past Komorn
Flow southward down through Hungary to the sea;
And where her chamois-hunters wind the horn
Along the Rhetian Alps, she comes, elate,
Peaceful, and prosperous, hither. May she be
A civic nation, with a happier fate
Than fell on her at Sadowa! O may she
Be lenient, juster, wiser than before,
Mother, and not Oppressor,
Redresser, not Transgressor,
And her black eagles' talons rend no more!

But who is she comes with her, with such a mountain air,
And singing on her way,
A simple spray of edelweis in her abundant hair,
A cold light in her bright, blue eyes, like that of winter day,
Steady, but sparkling, like her lakes, which Heaven stoops down to see,
And sees itself so clearer? Who may the maiden be?
No maiden, but a matron, mother of sturdy men,
Whose lion spirits Nature with independence fills,
Walled in with kingdoms, empires, and the everlasting hills.
Perhaps they have been conquered: but tell us where and when.
Not where her Arnold grasped the Austrian spears,
Nor when the Tuileries gave up its king,
And they were hacked in pieces! All the years
Have seen them dying, dying,
But never flying,
Unless they followed Victory's crimson wing!
As peaceful as the bosom of their lakes,
As rugged as the Alps which are their home,
Along whose granite feet their rivers foam,
As dreadful as the thunder when it shakes
Its lightnings over Jura! Heart and hand
Welcome the sole Republic—Switzerland.

With these come other three,
One kingdom and two empires, all at peace,
But dreaming of new warfare. Who shall say
When they may draw their million swords, and slay
The poor, unpitied peoples? What release
These have from them, and what the end may be?

Six years of doubtful greatness, hardly won,
Hath She possessed, and guarded day and night,
Forging huge cannon, in her grim delight,
To do (mistaken!) what can not be done.
The weak will band against her when she becomes too strong,
The strong will fall upon her when she becomes too weak,
And none will plead for her who smote them long,
Nor will her children turn the over-smitten cheek.
They sow but ill who sow the seeds of hate,
For while the harvests grow, the reapers wait.
Another Jena may efface Sedan,
And Kaiser (grant it, God!) give place to Man.
She should be greater in good things than they
Who sit on thrones about her, Pope and Czar,
For she was born beneath a better star,
And had good men to guide her on her way.
“Iron and blood” are curses
That hatch out sure reverses:
For Conquest flies from Carnage, which she brings,
Borne down in the lost battle by its tremendous wings!
Be greater than thy neighbors, Germany,
Severe step-mother, whom thy sons forsake
For peace and freedom elsewhere. Glory lies
Not in thine arms, but arts, in what is wise
Among thy thinkers, scholars, who partake
Of a larger nature than belongs to thee.
Better the land whose battles Luther fought
Than that of Frederick, misnamed the Great;
To which the deaf Beethoven, harkening, brought
God's chapel music; for which Goethe thought;
A prosperous People, not a powerful State!

But who is she, woman of northern blood,
With fells of yellow hair and ruddy looks,
Berserker wife, with many an ocean son?
Her robe is hemmed with mountains, fringed with fiords,
With scattered islands sown like pearls thereon,
Rivers therein as plentiful as brooks.
Her feet are in the seas, and arctic birds
Hover and scream about her; on her brow
The shadows of great pine woods: like the flood
Enters, and like the pine stands Sweden now!

Towering above and dwarfing these a Shape
Enormous and portentous. She looks down
And captives with her smile, and with her frown
Destroys, till none escape.
Her head in arctic winters, she looks round,
Westward and eastward, from the wild White Cape,
Across Siberian wastes to Behring Strait.
In the far distance her sharp eyes are glancing
To where her feet are stealthily advancing,
On peoples whom her Cossacks will surround,
On kings they will unking, and temples great
Whose gods they will destroy, or mutilate,
Despite the many hands that smite no more.
Southward, to where the mountain passes lead
To India; from her red Crimean shore,
Where she beheld in rage her children bleed,
Southward, along the waters, till she sees
Minarets and mosques,
Green gardens, cool kiosks,
Seraglios, where the Sultan lolls at ease—
She scarce can keep her hands off, for her hands
Pluck empires from her pathway! She commands
Her myriads, they obey: her shadows darken
Europe, Asia, who to her whispers harken,
Dreading her voice of thunder,
And the foot that tramples them under—
So comes imperious Russia! Giantess
With thin spots in her armor, forged too fast
Of outworn breastplates of old generations,
Her strength enfeebled by sparse populations,
Nomadic in the steppes: if she were less
She would be greater; she has grown too vast.
What does she see within her and without her?
What guards has sovereign Nature set about her?
Above an icy ocean, and below
Innumerable streams that come and go,
Through wildernesses, and unherded plains,
Long mountain ranges, where the snow remains,
And mocks the short-lived summer, penal mines,
Where poor, enslaved, rebellious Poland pines,
Chastising armies on her wide frontiers,
Where, imminent, War appears!
These things, O Russia! are thy weakness, these
Thy hard misfortune; nor can all thy state
Their terrible force abate,
Nor thy great cities, nor thy navied Seas,
Colossal Sister, whom we welcome here
To these high halls in this Centurial Year!

Who is this Woman of majestic mien?
More than woman, less than Queen,
Her long robe trailed with the dust
Of the old, ruined cities wherein she
Sate, abject, head bowed, in dead apathy,
Till some young, cruel hunter, spying, thrust
(Half in anger, half in play,)
His sharp spear at her as he rode that way,
Grazing her heart, till, startled back to life,
She rose, and fled, and hid among the tombs,
Safer where gaunt hyenas were at strife,
Than where men were! O wretched and forlorn!
Why art thou living? O why wert thou born?
Where are the many crowns that thou hast worn,
Discrowned One, and the many sceptres where?
Thy face is furrowed, furrowed, and thy hair
(Still golden) is disheveled! O what dooms
Have fallen upon thee! O what suns are set!
Thy far eyes see them yet.
The light of lost dominion lingers there,
The melancholy evening of regret;
And in thine ears what voices of despair,
The wailings of thy myriad children slain
By Mede and Roman, Turk and Tartar hordes,
The rush of onset and the din of swords,
Gengis, and Bajazet, and Tamerlane:
Weep, Asia, weep again!
Another in thy place,
So suddenly we did not see thee go;
Thou wert, and here she is! If there was woe,
There is no trace thereof in her untroubled face.
Who can declare the stature of this Woman,
The simple light of wonder in her eyes,
The strange, mysterious gloom that deeper lies,
And whether she be Godlike, or be Human?
Unhusbanded, and primitive;
But now, behold, her children live,
Crowding about her knees, the Mother of the Race!
Tents arise, and flocks are fed,
And men begin to bury dead.
O Shepherdess, thy sons depart,
The tents, the flocks, and where they were;
Cities gather, and thou art
No Shepherdess, but Worshipper.
For round thee exhalations rise,
Which men, beholding, straightway say,
“Lo, these are Gods!” and go their way,
And carve in wood, and mold in clay,
And cut in stone rude images
Hideous thereof, and bow to these,
Thou being their Priestess, both when they
Bring their first-fruits and on the altars lay,
And when their yearling lambs they sacrifice
To Gods that know not of it, nor any thing.
The ruler at the gate is now a king,
Has armèd men and horsemen, and is to battle gone,
Headed and goaded on by thee, O more than Amazon,
Whose once white robe is purple, whose strong right hand is red—
Heap ashes on thy head,
Thou dark, infuriate Mother, whose children's blood is shed!
Who shall declare her, from her garment's hem
To the tall towers of her great diadem,
Goddess! Gone again—
For here poor, ruined Asia weeps, and weeps in vain!

With her are certain of her peoples—they
Who dwell in far Cathay;
They, neighboring, who their island empire hold;
They, less remote, more old,
Who live in sacred Ind.

What shall we call
This Curious One, who builded a great wall,
That, rivers crossing, skirting mountain steeps,
Did not keep out but let in the Invader;
Who is what her ancients made her;
Who neither wholly wakes, nor wholly sleeps,
Fool at once and sage,
Childhood of more than patriarchal age?
With twinkling, almond eyes, and little feet,
She totters hither, from her fields of flowers,
From where Pekin uplifts its pictured towers,
And from the markets where her merchants meet
And barter with the world. We close our eyes,
And see her otherwise.
(Perhaps the spell began
With the quaint figures on her painted fan.)
At first she is a Land,
A stretch of plains and mountains, and long rivers,
Down which her inland tribute she delivers
To the sea cities: where a child may stand,
A man may climb, plants are, and shrubs, and trees;
Arable every where,
No idlers there
In that vast hive-world of industrious bees.
Now she is many persons, many things,
The little and the great;
The Emperor plowing in the Sacred Field,
What time the New-Year comes in solemn state:
A soldier, with his matchlock, bow, and shield,
Behind the many-bannered dragon wings;
A bonze, where the high pagodas rise,
And Buddha sits, cross-legged, in rapt repose;
A husbandman that goes
And sows his fields with wheat,
And gathers in his harvests, dries his tea;
Hunter, from whom the silver pheasant flies;
Boatman, whose boat floats downward to the sea;
Sailor, whose junk is clumsy; woodman, who
Cuts camphor-trees, and groves of tall bamboo;
Gardens, where flowers and fruits together grow,
The banyan and pomegranate, and the palm,
And the great water-lily, white as snow;
Rivers, with low squat bridges; every where
Women and children; beardless men, with queues,
In tunics, short wide trowsers, silken shoes,
Some with the peakèd caps of Mandarins;
Behold the ruby button burning there,
And yonder severed head that ghastly grins;
Old hill-side tombs, where mourners still repair;
Innumerous Bustle, immemorial Calm—
And this is China!

She
Who follows quickly—if she woman be—
Is clad in a loose robe, whose flowing folds
Mold out the shape they cover, and discover
To the eye of lord and lover,
The strong limbs, girdled waist, the arm that holds
Her island children, and the breasts that feed.
Woman and mother, why that manly stride,
And the two swords at thy side?
Offended or defended, who must bleed?
Her face is powdered, painted, and her hair,
Drawn high above her head, with pins of gold
Is fastened: if light olive tints are fair,
Fair is her oval face, though over-bold.
Good-humor lights it, frankness and the grace
Of high-born manner, honor, pride of place:
But, looking closer, keener, we discern
Something that can be stern,
Like the dark tempest on her mountain highlands,
The wild typhoons that whirl around her thousand islands!
Most bounteous here, as in her sea girt lands,
Where she stretches forth her hands,
Plucks cocoas and bananas in woods of oak and pine,
Grapes on every vine,
And walks on gold and silver, and knows her power increased,
Nor fears her nobles longer the Lady of the East!
What words of what great poet can declare
This woman's fallen greatness, her despair,
The melancholy light in her mild eyes?
She neither lives—nor dies!
First-born of Earth's First Mother, she gave birth
To the infant races, and her dwelling place
Cradled the young religions: face to face,
Her many gods and children walked the Earth.
(Who could know, when Life began,
Which was God, and which was Man?)
Her mountains are the bases of the sky,
Where the gods brooded, uncreate, eternal,
Celestial and infernal,
Indra every where, and Siva nigh—
Thunder voice that in the summer speaks,
Shadow of the wings that fly,
Arrow in the bended bow!
Did they wander down the mountain peaks,
Through the clouds and everlasting snow?
Or did men clamber up, and fetch them down below?
Who may know
What their heads and hands portend,
What the beasts whereon they ride,
And whether these be deified;
What was in the beginning, and shall be in the end?
What matter? Things like these,
Struggles to ascend the ladder of the air,
Plunges to reach unbottomed mysteries,
Have been thy ruin, India, once so fair,
So powerful, prayerful! Hands that clasp in prayer
Let go the sword and sceptre: thou hast seen
Thine roughly wrested from thee, and hast been
A prey to many spoilers, some thine own.
Timor proclaimed himself thy Emperor;
And Baber conquered, beaten thrice before;
And Nadir took thy glorious Peacock Throne;
And others, Hindoo, Moslem, self-made kings,
Carved out rich kingdoms from thy wide domains,
Had violent, bloody reigns,
And perished (the gods be thanked!) like meaner things,
If meaner, crueler in thy forests be,
Among the wolves and jackals skulking there,
And dreadful tigers roaring in their lair,
Than these foul beasts that so dismembered thee!
O Mortal and Divine!
The largeness of the primitive world is thine!
The everlasting handywork remains,
In the high mountain ranges, the broad plains,
The wastes, and vast, impenetrable woods,
(Oppressive solitudes
Where no man was,) the multitudinous rivers—
The Gods were generous givers,
If from the heavenly summit of Meru,
Beyond all height, they sent the Ganges down.
Or is it, Goddess, from thy mountained crown,
Far-lifted in the inaccessible blue,
Its waters, rising in perpetual snow,
Come in swift torrents, swollen in their flow
By larger rivers, others swelling them,
All veins to this long stem
Of thy great leaf of verdure? Sacred River,
That from Gangotri goest to the Sea,
Past temples, cities, peoples, Holy Stream,
Whom but to hear of, wish for, see, or touch,
Bathe in, or sing old hymns to, day by day,
Whom but to name a hundred leagues away,
Was to atone for all the sins committed
In three past lives, (for Vishnu so permitted,)
O Ganges! would the Powers could re-deliver
Thy virtues lost, or we renew the dream:
We can restore so much,
India, we cannot yet relinquish Thee!
A Vision of a Cloud,
Remote, but floating nearer, looming higher;
Movements therein as if of smothered fire,
And voices that are neither low nor loud.
A Vision of a Shadow, stooping down,
Or rising up: we first behold the feet,
Then the huge, grasping hands; at last the frown
On what should be the face of this Afreet.
A Vision of a Form that lies supine,
Feet in the Indian Ocean, elbow leaning
On a green Atlantic cape, with nothing screening,
Not even a lifted palm-leaf, the fierce shine
Of summer from its blinking, blinded eyes,
The hot sirocco from its desert brain,
Which a great Sea cannot cool: supine it lies—
If chained, it hugs the chain!
Its head is on the mountains, and its hands
Fumble in its long slumber and dull dreams;
They finger cowries in the briny sands,
And dabble in the ooze of shrinking streams.
What happens around it neither hears nor heeds,
Awake or sleeping: over it lizards crawl,
The desert ostrich scampers in its face,
The hippopotamus crushes its river reeds,
Locusts consume, lions tear: it lies through all—
Most brutish of the Race!

A Vision of a River, and a Land
Where no rain falls, which is the river's bed,
Through which it flows from waters far away,
Great lakes, and springs unknown, increasing slow,
Till the midsummer currents, rushing red,
Come overflowing the banks day after day,
Like ocean billows that devour the strand,
Till, lo, there is no land,
Save the cliffs of granite that inclose their flow,
And the waste sands beyond; subsiding then
Till Earth comes up again, and the husbandmen
(Chanting old hymns the while)
Sow their sure crops, which till midwinter be
Green, gladdening the old Nile
As he goes on his gracious journey to the Sea!
Land of strange gods, human, and beast, and bird,
Where animals were sacred and adored,
The great bull Apis being of these the chief;
Pasth, with her woman's breast and lion face,
Maned, with her long arms stretching down her thighs;
Nu, with the ram's head and the curlèd horns;
And Athor, whom a templed crown adorns;
And Mut, the vulture. And the higher Three,
The Goddess-Mother Isis, and her lord,
Divine Osiris, whom dark Typhon slew,
For whom, in her great grief,
(Leading unfathered Horus, weeping, too,)
She wandered up and down, lamenting sore,
Searching for lost Osiris: Libya heard
Her lamentations, and her rainy eyes
Flooded the shuddering Nile from shore to shore,
Till she had found, in many a secret place,
The poor dismembered body (can it be
These are supreme Osiris?) whereat she
Gathered the dear remains that Typhon hid,
And builded over each a Pyramid
In thirty cities, and was queen no more;
For Horus governed in his father's stead,
The crowns of Earth and Heaven on his anointed head!
From out the mists of hoar Antiquity
Straggle uncertain figures, gods or men,
Menes, Athothis, Cheops, and Khafren;
No matter who these last were, what they did,
Save that each raised a monstrous Pyramid
To house his mummy, and they rise to-day
Rifled thereof! And she
Colossal Woman, couchant in the sands,
Who has a lion's body, paws for hands,
(If she was wingèd, like the Theban one,
The wide-spread wings are gone.)
Nations have fallen round her, but she stands,
Dynasties came and went, but she went not,
She saw the Pharaohs and the Shepherd Kings,
Chariots and horsemen in their dread array,
Cambyses, Alexander, Anthony,
The hosts of standards, and the eagle wings,
Whom, to her ruinous sorrow, Egypt drew:
She saw, and she forgot,
Remembered not the old gods, nor the new,
Which were to her as though they had not been;
Remembered not the opulent, great Queen,
Whom riotous misbecomings so became,
Temptress, whom none could tame,
Splendor and Danger, fatal to beguile;
Remembered not the serpent of old Nile,
Nor the Herculean Roman she loved and overthrew!
Half buried in the sand she lies:
She neither questions, nor replies;
And what is coming, what is gone,
Disturbs her not: she looks straight on,
Under the everlasting skies,
In what Eternal Eyes!
Out of all this a Presence comes, and stands
Full-fronted, as who turns upon the Past,
Modern among the ancients, and the last
Of re-born, risen nations: in her hands,
That once so many sceptres held, and rods,
A palm leaf set with jewels: Princess, she,
She has her palaces along the Nile,
Her navies on the Sea;
And in the temples of her fallen gods,
(Not hers, she knows but the One God over all,)
She hears from holy mosques the muezzins call,
“Lo, Allah is Most Great!” And when the dawn
Is drawing near, “Prayer better is than Sleep.”
She rides abroad, her curtains are undrawn,
She walks with lifted veil, nor hides her smile,
Nor the sweet, luminous eyes, where languors creep
No more: she is no more Circassian girl,
But Princess, woman with the mother-breast;
No Cleopatra to dissolve the pearl
And take the asp—the East become the West!
Honor to Egypt, honor,
May Allah smile upon her!
He does; for, while on others waning now,
The Prophet's Crescent broadens on her brow.
O prosper, Egypt, prosper! Nor deplore
What was, and might have been,
When thou wert slave and queen:
Hither, and sing “In Exitu” no more!

Welcome, a thousand welcomes! Our emotion
Demands a speech we have not: it demands
The unutterable largeness of the Ocean,
The immeasurable broadness of the Lands
That own us masters. Who is he shall speak
This language for us? From what mountain peak?
And in the rhythms of what epic Song,
At once serene and strong?
Welcomes, ten thousand welcomes! It is much,
O Sisters, ye have done in coming here,
For from the hour ye touch
Our peaceful shores, ye are peaceful, equal, dear!
Not with exultations,
O Sister, Mother Nations,
Do we receive your coming; for more than many see
Comes with ye; do ye see it? It is what is to be
Some day among your myriads, who will no more obey,
But, peaceable or warring, will then find out the way
Themselves to govern: if they tolerate
Kaisers, and Kings, and Princelings, as to-day,
It will be because they pity, and are too good to hate.
The New World is teaching the Old World to be free:
This, her acknowledgment from these, is more
Than all that went before.
Henceforth, America, Man looks up to Thee,
Not down at the dead Republics. Rise, arise!
That all men may behold thee. Be not proud,
Be humble and be wise,
And let thy head be bowed
To the Unknown, Supreme One, who on high
Has willed thee not to die!
Be grateful, watchful, brave,
See that among thy children none shall plunder,
Nor rend asunder,
Swift to detect and punish, and strong to shield and save!
Shall the drums beat, trumpets sound,
And the cannon thunder round?
No, these are warlike noises, and must cease;
Not thus, while the whole world from battle rests,
The Commonwealth receives her honored guests;
She celebrates no Triumphs but of Peace.