ODE
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(Sung in the Town Hall, Concord, July 4, 1857.)
O tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire.
The cannon booms from town to town,
Our pulses beat not less,
The joy-bells chime their tidings down,
Which children’s voices bless.
For He that flung the broad blue fold
O’er-mantling land and sea,
One third part of the sky unrolled
For the banner of the free.
The men are ripe of Saxon kind
To build an equal state,—
To take the statute from the mind
And make of duty fate.
United States! the ages plead,—
Present and Past in under-song,—
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
For sea and land don’t understand
Nor skies without a frown
See rights for which the one hand fights
By the other cloven down.
Be just at home; then write your scroll
Of honor o’er the sea,
And bid the broad Atlantic roll
A ferry of the free.
And henceforth there shall be no chain,
Save underneath the sea
The wires shall murmur through the main
Sweet songs of liberty.
The conscious stars accord above,
The waters wild below,
And under, through the cable wove,
Her fiery errands go.
AMERICA FIRST[12]
ANONYMOUS
This is the season when Young America celebrates the glorious deeds of the forefathers, when they cut the leading-strings that bound them to the Old World, and stepped forth with the independence of manhood.
It took Rome five hundred years, five centuries of war, intrigue and arrogance, to overspread Southern Europe. In a little more than one century America has grown to a magnitude in area and perhaps in population also, equal to that of Rome in its most magnificent days.
“Civis Romanus sum!” was the proudest boast that could fall from the lips of man at the beginning of the Christian era. Is there to-day an American who rates his citizenship in the Great Republic at a lower value than Roman freedom nineteen hundred years ago?
The day for “spread-eagle” brag is long past, but there is no reason why we should hesitate to say what not we alone but all the people of the world believe, that it is the destiny of this country to become the greatest, the strongest, the wealthiest, the most self-supporting of all the nations of the earth. It is already the greatest self-governing community the world has ever seen.
How can we make it greater? By standing together as Americans. We shall not magnify, but shall belittle ourselves, if we swagger before our neighbors—using bravado for the strong, and insolence in our treatment of the weak. But we should take American views instead of party views, when questions arise between this government and others.
The motto “America against the world” would be a contemptible motto. Yet is it not better to adopt even such a motto than to take the side of the world against America, or to be indifferent when the interests of one’s own country are assailed?
The Fourth of July is a good time for us all to resolve that we will be Americans at heart. Not that we will build up our own country on the ruins of others, but that when there is a clashing of interests those of our native land shall have our hearty support.