Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910)

MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnish’d rows of steel:

‘As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel!

Since God is marching on.’

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Judgment Seat;

O, be swift, my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born, across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.