With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!
'This day we fashion Destiny, our web of fate we spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,
We call the dews of blessing, or the bolts of cursing down!
"By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame;
By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came;
'By the future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast
'Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the past,
'And in the awful name of Him who for earth's freedom died;