BATTLE HYMN.
I.
Father of earth and heaven! I call thy name!
Round me the smoke and shout of battle roll;
My eyes are dazzled with the rustling flame;
Father, sustain an untried soldier's soul!
Or life or death, whatever be the goal
That crowns or closes round this struggling hour,
Thou knowest, if ever from my spirit stole
One deeper prayer,'twas that no cloud might lower
On my young fame! Oh, hear, God of eternal power!
II.
God! thou art merciful—the wintry storm,
The cloud that pours the thunder from its womb,
But show the sterner grandeur of thy form;
The lightnings glancing through the midnight
gloom,
To Faith's raised eye as calm, as lovely come,
As splendors of the autumnal evening star,
As roses shaken by the breeze's plume,
When like cool incense comes the dewy air,
And on the golden wave the sunset burns afar.
III.
God! thou art mighty!—at thy footstool bound,
Lie gazing to thee Chance, and Life, and Death;
Nor in the Angel-circle flaming round,
Nor in the million worlds that blaze beneath
Is one that can withstand thy wrath's hot breath—
Woe in thy frown—in thy smile, victory!
Hear my last prayer—I ask no mortal wreath;
Let but these eyes my rescued country see,
Then take my spirit, All-Omnipotent, to thee.
IV.
Now for the fight—now for the cannon-peal—
Forward—through blood and toil, and cloud and
fire!
Glorious the shout, the shock, the crash of steel,
The volley's roll, the rocket's blasting spire;
They shake—like broken waves their squares
retire,—
On, them, hussars!—now give them rein and heel;
Think of the orphaned child, the murdered sire:—
Earth cries for blood—in thunder on them wheel!
This hour to Europe's fate shall set the triumph seal.
KARL THEODORE KORNER.
SELF-RELIANCE.
1. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what THEY thought.
2. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
3. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
4. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. 5. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without pre- established harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.
6. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
7. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
8. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort, let us advance on Chaos and the Dark.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.
1. Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as on subsequent periods, the head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead.
2. But how little is there of the great and good which can die? To their country they yet live, and live forever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world.
3. A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man,— when heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift,—is not a temporary flame, burning bright for awhile, and then expiring, giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human mind; so that, when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows; but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit.
4. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the torch of his miraculous mind to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on, in the orbits which he saw and described for them, in the infinity of space.
5. No two men now live—perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age,—who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed their own sentiments, in regard to politics and government, on mankind; infused their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others; or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep; it has sent them to the very center; no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens.
6. We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come, in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is—one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come, in which in it will cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant, or so unjust, as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of these we now honor, in producing that momentous event.
DANIEL WEBSTER.
THE DEFENCE OF LUCKNOW.
I.
Banner of England, not for a season, O banner of
Britain, hast thou
Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the battle cry!
Never with mightier glory than when we had reared
thee on high,
Flying at top of the roofs in the ghastly siege at Lucknow—
Shot through the staff or the halyard, but ever we raised
thee anew,
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
II.
Frail were the works that defended the hold that we held with our lives— Women and children among us—God help them, our children and wives! Hold it we might—and for fifteen days or for twenty at most. "Never surrender, I charge you, but every man die at his post!" Voice of the dead whom we loved, our Lawrence the best of the brave; Cold were his brows when we kissed him—we laid him that night in his grave.
III.
"Every man die at his post!" and there hailed on our
houses and halls
Death from their rifle bullets, and death from their cannon
balls,
Death in our innermost chamber, and death at our slight
barricade,
Death while we stood with the musket, and death while
we stoopt to the spade,
Death to the dying, and wounds to the wounded, for
often there fell,
Striking the hospital wall, crashing through it, their
shot and their shell,
IV.
Death—for their spies were among us, their marksman
were told of our best,
So that the brute bullet broke through the brain that
could think for the rest;
Bullets would sing by our foreheads, and bullets would
rain at our feet—
Fire from ten thousand at once of the rebels that girdled
us round;
Death at the glimpse of a finger from over the breadth
of a street,
Death from the heights of the mosque and the palace—
and death in the ground!
V.
Mine? yes, a mine! Countermine! down, down! and
creep through the hole,
Keep the revolver in hand! You can hear him—the
murderous mole.
Quiet! ah! quiet—wait till the point of the pickaxe
be through!
Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again
than before—
Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is
no more;
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England
blew.
VI.
Ay, but the foe sprung his mine many times, and it chanced on a day, Soon as the blast of that underground thunder-clap echoed away, Dark through the smoke and the sulphur, like so many fiends in their hell— Cannon-shot, musket-shot, volley on volley, and yell upon yell— Fiercely on all the defences our myriad enemies fell.
VII.
What have they done? where is it? Out yonder.
Guard the Redan!
Storm at the Water-gate, storm at the Bailey-gate!
storm, and it ran
Surging and swaying all round us, as ocean on every
side
Plunges and heaves at a bank that is daily drowned by
the tide—
So many thousands that if they be bold enough, who
shall escape?
Kill or be killed, live or die, they shall know we are
soldiers and men.
VIII.
Ready! take aim at their leaders—their masses are
gapped with our grape—
Backward they reel like the wave, like the wave
flinging forward again,
Flying and foiled at the last by the handful they could
not subdue;
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England
blew.
IX.
Handful of men as we were, we were English in heart
and in limb,
Strong with the strength of the race to command, to
obey, to endure,
Each of us fought as if hope for the garrison hung but
on him—
Still, could we watch at all points? We were every
day fewer and fewer.
X.
There was a whisper among us, but only a whisper
that passed—
"Children and wives—if the tigers leap into the folds
unawares,
Every man die at his post—and the foe may outlive
us at last,
Better to fall by the hands that they love, than to fall
into theirs."
XI.
Roar upon roar—in a moment two mines, by the enemy sprung, Clove into perilous chasms our walls and our poor palisades. Riflemen, true is your heart, but be sure that your hand be as true. Sharp is the fire of assault, better aimed are your flank fusilades; Twice do we hurl them to earth from the ladders to which they had clung, Twice from the ditch where they shelter we drive them with hand grenades—, And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
XII.
Then on another wild morning another wild earthquake
out-tore
Clean from our lines of defence ten or twelve good
paces or more.
Riflemen, high on the roof, hidden there from the light
of the sun—
One has leapt up on the breach, crying out, "Follow
me, follow me!"
Mark him—he falls! then another, and him, too, and
down goes he.
XIII.
Had they been bold enough then, who can tell but that
the traitors had won?
Boardings, and raftings, and doors—an embrasure;
make way for the gun!
Now, double charge it with grape! It is charged, and
we fire, and they run.
Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the dark face
have his due.
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us,
faithful and few,
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them,
and smote them, and slew—
That ever upon the topmost roof our banner in India
blew.
XIV.
Hark! cannonade! fusilade! is it true that was told
by the scout?
Outram and Havelock breaking their way through the
fell mutineers?
Surely, the pibroch of Europe is ringing again in our ears!
All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant shout;
Havelock's glorious Highlanders answer with conquering
cheers.
XV.
Forth from their holes and their hidings our women
and children come out,
Blessing the wholesome white faces of Havelock's good
fusileers,
Kissing the war-hardened hand of the Highlander wet
with their tears.
Dance to the pibroch! saved! we are saved! is it you?
is it you?
Saved by the valor of Havelock, saved by the blessing
of Heaven!
"Hold it for fifteen days!" we have held it for eighty-
seven!
And ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of
England blew.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
SONNETS.
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
J. KEATS.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide.
Doth God exact day labor, light deny'd,
I fondly ask? but patience to prevent
That murmur soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
JOHN MILTON.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.