Graded Memory Selections

by Various

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

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

He hath loosed the fateful 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 have read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished 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;

Oh, 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.

—Julia Ward Howe.

THE BAREFOOT BOY.[24]

Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan!

With thy turned up pantaloons

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lips, redder still,

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;

From my heart I give thee joy!—

I was once a barefoot boy!

Oh, for boyhood’s painless play,

Sleep that wakes in laughing day,

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,

Knowledge never learned in schools,

Of the wild bee’s morning chase,

Of the wild flower’s time and place,

How the tortoise bears his shell,

How the woodchuck digs his cell,

How the robin feeds her young,

How the oriole’s nest is hung,

Where the whitest lilies blow,

Where the freshest berries grow,

Where the ground-nut trails its vine,

Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine,

Of the black wasp’s cunning way,

Mason of his walls of clay.

Oh, for boyhood’s time of June,

Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw

Me, their master, waited for!

I was rich in flowers and trees,

Humming-birds and honey-bees;

For my sport the squirrel played,

Plied the snouted mole his spade.

Laughed the brook for my delight,

Through the day and through the night,

Whispering at the garden wall,

Talked with me from fall to fall.

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,

Mine the walnut slopes beyond,

Mine on bending orchard trees,

Apples of Hesperides.

I was monarch: pomp and joy

Waited on the barefoot boy!

—Whittier.

LINCOLN, THE GREAT COMMONER.[25]

When the Norn-mother saw the Whirl-wind Hour,

Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,

She bent the strenuous heavens and came down

To make a man to meet the mortal need.

She took the tried clay of the common road,

Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth,

Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy:

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff,

It was a stuff to wear for centuries,

A man that matched the mountains and compelled

The stars to look our way and honor us.

The color of the ground was in him, the red Earth

The tang and odor of the primal things—

The rectitude and patience of the rocks:

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;

The courage of the bird that dares the sea;

The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;

The pity of the snow that hides all scars;

The loving kindness of the wayside well;

The tolerance and equity of light

That gives as freely to the shrinking weed

As to the great oak flaring to the wind—

To the grave’s low hill as to the Matterhorn

That shoulders out the sky.

And so he came

From prairie cabin up to Capitol,

One fair Ideal led our chieftain on.

Forevermore he burned to do his deed

With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.

He built the rail pile as he built the State,

Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,

The conscience of him testing every blow,

To make his deed the measure of a man.

So came the captain with the mighty heart;

And when the step of earthquake shook the house,

Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold,

He held the ridge-pole up and spiked again

The rafters of the Home. He held his place—

Held the long purpose like a growing tree—

Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down

As when a kingly cedar green with boughs

Goes down with a great shout upon the hills.

—Edwin Markham.

OPPORTUNITY.[26]

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords

Shocked upon swords and shields, a prince’s banner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle’s edge,

And thought: “Had I a sword of keener steel—

That blue blade that the king’s son bears—but this

Blunt thing!” He snapped and flung it from his hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king’s son wounded, sore bestead,

And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,

Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout

Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause on that heroic day.

—Edward Rowland Sill.

A SONG.[27]

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear;

There is ever a something sings alway:

There’s the song of the lark when the skies are clear,

And the song of the thrush when the skies are gray.

The sunshine showers across the grain,

And the bluebird trills in the orchard tree;

And in and out, when the eaves drip rain,

The swallows are twittering ceaselessly.

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

Be the skies above or dark or fair,

There is ever a song that our hearts may hear—

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear—

There is ever a song somewhere!

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,

In the mid-night black, or the mid-day blue;

The robin pipes when the sun is here,

And the cricket chirps the whole night through.

The buds may blow, and the fruit may grow,

And the autumn leaves drop crisp and sear;

But whether the sun, or the rain, or the snow,

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

Be the skies above or dark or fair,

There is ever a song that our hearts may hear—

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear—

There is ever a song somewhere!

—James Whitcomb Riley.