The Song of the Stone Wall

by Helen Keller

Sing of happier themes, O many-voiced epic,
Sing how the ages, like thrifty husbandmen, winnow the creeds of
men,
And leave only faith and love and truth.
Sing of the Puritans nobler nature,
Fathomless as the forests he felled,
Irresistible as the winds that blow.
His trenchant conviction was but the somber bulwark
Which guarded his pure ideal.
Resolute by the communion board he stood,
And after solemn prayer solemnly cancelled
And abolished the divine right of kings
And declared the holy rights of man.
Prophet and toiler, yearning for other worlds, yet wise in this;
Scornful of earthly empire and brooding on death,
Yet wrestling life out of the wilderness
And laying stone on stone the foundation of a temporal state!
I see him standing at his cabin-door at eventide
With dreaming, fearless eyes gazing at sunset hills;
In his prophetic sight Liberty, like a bride,
Hasteth to meet her lord, the westward-going man!
Even as he saw the citadel of Heaven,
He beheld an earthly state divinely fair and just.
Mystic and statesman, maker of homes,
Strengthened by the primal law of toil,
And schooled by monarch-made injustices,
He carried the covenant of liberty with fire and sword,
And laid a rich state on frugality!
Many republics have sprung into being,
Full-grown, equipped with theories forged in reason;
All, all have fallen in a single night;
But to the wise, fire-hardened Puritan
Democracy was not a blaze of glory
To crackle for an hour and be quenched out
By the first gust that blows across the world.
I see him standing at his cabin-door,
And all his dreams are true as when he dreamed them;
But only shall they be fulfilled if we
Are mindful of the toil that gave him power,
Are brave to dare a wilderness of wrong;
So long shall Nature nourish us and Spring
Throw riches in the lap of man
As we beget no wasteful, weak-handed generations,
But bend us to the fruitful earth in toil.
Beyond the wall a new-plowed field lies steaming in the sun,
And down the road a merry group of children
Run toward the village school.

Hear, O hear! In the historian walls
Rises the beat and the tumult of the struggle for freedom.
Sacred, blood-stained walls, your peaceful front
Sheltered the fateful fires of Lexington;
Builded to fence green fields and keep the herds at pasture,
Ye became the frowning breastworks of stern battle;
Lowly boundaries of the freemans farm,
Ye grew the rampart of a land at war;
And still ye cross the centuries
Between the ages of monarchs and the age
When farmers in their fields are kings.
From the Revolution the young Republic emerged,
She mounted up as on the wings of the eagle,
She ran and was not weary, and all the children of the world
Joined her and followed her shining path.
But ever as she ran, above her lifted head
Darkened the monster cloud of slavery.
Hark! In the walls, amid voices of prayer and of triumph,
I hear the clank of manacles and the ominous mutterings of bondsmen!
At Gettysburg, our Golgotha, the sons of the fathers
Poured their blood to wash out a nations shame.
Cleansed by tribulation and atonement,
The broken nation rose from her knees,
And with hope reborn in her heart set forth again
Upon the open road to ideal democracy.

Sing, walls, in lightning words that shall cause the world to
vibrate,
Of the democracy to come,
Of the swift, teeming, confident thing!
We are part of it—the wonder and the terror and the glory!
Fearless we rush forward to meet the years,
The years that come flying towards us
With wings outspread, agleam on the horizon of time!

O eloquent, sane walls, instinct with a new faith,
Ye are barbarous, in congruous, but great with the greatness of
reality.
Walls wrought in unfaltering effort,
Sing of our prosperity, the joyous harvest
Of the labor of lusty toilers.
Down through the years comes the ring of their victorious axes:
Ye are titans of the forest, but we are stronger;
Ye are strong with the strength of mighty winds,
But we are strong with the unconquerable strength of souls!
Still the young race, unassailable, inviolate,
Shakes the solitudes with the strokes of creation;
Doubly strong we renew the valorous days,
And like a measureless sea we overflow
The fresh green, benevolent West,
The buoyant, fruitful West that dares and sings!
Pure, dew-dripping walls that guard
The quiet, lovable, fertile fields,
Sing praises to Him who from the mossy rocks
Can bid the fountains leap in thirsty lands.
I walk beside the stones through the young grain,
Through waves of wheat that billow about my knees.
The walls contest the onward march of the wheat;
But the wheat is charged with the life of the world;
Its force is irresistible; onward it sweeps,
An engulfing tide, over all the land,
Till hill and valley, field and plain
Are flooded with its green felicity!
Out of the moist earth it has sprung;
In the gracious amplitudes of her bosom it was nurtured,
And in it is wrought the miracle of life.

Sing, prophetic, mystic walls, of the dreams of the builders;
Sing in thundering tones that shall thrill us
To try our dull discontent, our barren wisdom
Against their propagating, unquenchable, questionless visions.
Sing in renerving refrain of the resolute men,
Each a Lincoln in his smoldering patience,
Each a Luther in his fearless faith,
Who made a breach in the wall of darkness
And let the hosts of liberty march through.

Calm, eternal walls, tranquil, mature,
Which old voices, old songs, old kisses cover,
As mosses and lichens cover your ancient stones,
Teach me the secret of your serene repose;
Tell of the greater things to be,
When love and wisdom are the only creed,
And law and right are one.
Sing that the Lord cometh, the Lord cometh,
The fountain-head and spring of life!
Sing, steady, exultant walls, in strains hallowed and touched with
fire,
Sing that the Lord shall build us all together.
As living stones build us, cemented together.
May He who knoweth every pleasant thing
That our sires forewent to teach the peoples law and truth,
Who counted every stone blessed by their consecrated hands,
Grant that we remain liberty-loving, substantial, elemental,
And that faith, the rock not fashioned of human hands,
Be the stability of our triumphant, toiling days.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Song of the Stone Wall, by Helen Keller