A DITHYRAMB.
I.
Lift up your voices in fraternal chorus,
All ye who share
The joyous spirit of the poet,
Wheresoe'er
In the four corners of the earth ye dwell!
—Lift up your voices! Tell
Its owners earth is fair!
Sing! Shout aloud, and show it!
Sing! for the earth is fair!
The same blue heaven is bending o'er us,
The same green earth extends before us,
And heaven is kind and earth is fair
—But mankind do not know it!
Lift up your voices
Till the world rejoices
And knows that earth is fair!
II.
What though we stand in sundered lands
And sing in several voices?
The brotherhood has many bands,
But with one heart rejoices.
III.
From the same Father-God we came,
To the same Father-God we go;
Our hopes above are all the same,
—The same our griefs below,
Our sadness!
IV.
Sing! till the night of sorrow
Is frightened from the land!
Give into every hand
The torch of gladness!
—Gladness is a flame
Increasing if you lend or if you borrow—
And cry aloud! proclaim
At midnight everywhere
Good morrow! and good morrow!
Till timorous souls leap from their hidings
And know that earth is fair!—
Lift up your voices
Till the world rejoices!
Sing! till the surging air
Beats on the battlements of heaven the tidings
That man rejoices for the earth is fair!
