Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Songs of Labor and Reform

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,

Within 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 it 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!