The closing canto of Longfellow's “Launching of the Ship,” almost deserves a patriotic hymn-tune, though its place and use are commonly with school recitations.
“GOD OF OUR FATHERS, KNOWN OF OLD.”
Rudyard Kipling, in a moment of serious reflection on the flamboyant militarism of British sentiment during the South African War, wrote this remarkable “Recessional,” so strikingly unlike his other war-time poems. It is to be hoped he did not suddenly repent his Christian impulse, but with the chauvinistic cry around him, “Our Country, right or wrong!” he seems to have felt the contrast of his prayer—and flung it into the waste-basket. His watchful wife rescued it (the story says) and bravely sent it to the London Times. The world owes her a debt. The hymn is not only an anthem for Peace Societies, but a tonic for true patriotism. When Freedom fights in self-defense, she need not force herself to “forget” the Lord of Hosts.
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine;
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.
The tumult and the shouting dies,