Now, music, cease,
And bitter brazen trumpets hold your peace!
Now, while the dumb, white air
Draws from our still despair
A purer prayer.
Then must the sod
Fulfill its humble share,
Meek-folded o'er his breast,
Here where he lies amongst the waiting trees:
They shall break bud when warm winds from the west
And southern breezes come to touch the place
Made precious by this grace
Of memory dear to God.
We leave him where the granite Lion lies
And gazes toward the East, with woman's eyes
That read the riddle of the undying sun,
Bearing within her breast the stony germ
Of continents, but—lasting no less firm—
The memory of those marvels done,
The battles fought, the words that wrought
To free a race, and chasten one.
We leave him where the river slowly winds,
A broken chain;
The river that so late its hero finds,
Without a stain,
Whose name so long expectantly it bore;
And, echoing now a people's thought,
The Charles shall murmur by this reedy shore
His fame forevermore.
ARISE, AMERICAN!
The soul of a nation awaking,—
High visions of daybreak I saw,
And the stir of a state, the forsaking
Of sin, and the worship of law.
O pine-tree, shout! And hoarser
Rush, river, unto the sea,
Foam-fettered and sun-flushed, a courser
That feels the prairie, free!
Our birth-star beckons to trial
All faith of the far-fled years,
Ere scorn was our share, and denial,
Or laughter for patriot's tears.
And lo, Faith comes forth the finer
From trampled thickets of fire,
And the orient opens diviner
Before her; the heaven lifts higher.
O deep, sweet eyes, and severer
Than steel! he knoweth who comes,
Thy hero: bend thine eyes nearer!
Now wilder than battle-drums
Thy glance in his blood is stirring!
His heart is alive like the main
When the roweled winds are spurring,
And the broad tides shoreward strain.
O hero, art thou among us?
O helper, hidest thou still?
Why hath he no anthem sung us,
Why waiteth, nor worketh our will?