OUR COUNTRY SAVED
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
(Extract from Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865.)
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!
Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves!
And from every mountain-peak
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,
And so leap on in light from sea to sea,
Till the glad news be sent
Across a kindling continent,
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:
Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all mankind!
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;
From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,
And bids her navies, that so lately hurled
Their crashing battle, to hold their thunders in,
Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.
No challenge sends she to the older world,
That looked askance and hatred; a light scorn
Plays o’er her mouth, as round her mighty knees
She calls her children back, and waits the morn
Of nobler days, enthroned between her subject seas.
Bow down, dear land, for thou hast found release!
Thy God, in these distempered days,
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
And through thine enemies hath wrought thee peace!
Bow down in prayer and praise!
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man’s enfranchised brow.
O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-disheveled hair
O’er such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy set lips
Freed from wrath’s pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare;
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!