The normal nation lives until it dies,
As men may die when they have ceased to live;
But when abnormal, by a foe's surprise,
It may not reach its first-appointed goal;
For what we have not is not ours to give,
And if we miss it all we miss the whole.
Columbia, young, a giant baby born,
Aimed at a manhood ere the child had been,
And slipping downward in a strut forlorn,
Learns, to its sorrow, what 'tis good to know,
That babes who walk too soon, too soon begin
To walk in this dark vale of life below.
When first the State of Charleston did secede,
And Morrill's tariff was declared repealed,
The soul of Freedom everywhere did bleed
For that which, having seen, it sadly saw;
So true it is, death-wounds are never healed,
And law defied is not unquestioned law.
The mother-poet, England, sadly viewed
The strife unnatural across the wave,
And with maternal tenderness renewed
Her sweet assurances of neutral love;
A mother's love may not its offspring save;
But mother's love is still a mother's love.
Learn thou, Columbia, in thine agony,
That England loves thee, with a love as deep
As my "Proverbial Philosophy"
Has won for me from her approving breast;
The love that never slumbers cannot sleep,
And all for highest good is for the best.
Thy Freedom fattens on the work of slaves,
Her Grace of Sutherland informeth me;
And all thy South Amboy is full of graves,
Where tortured bondmen snatch a dread repose;
Learn, then, the race enslaved is never free,
And in thy woes incurred, behold thy woes.
Thy pride is humbled, humbled is thy pride,
And now misfortunes come upon thee, thick
With dark reproaches for the right defied,
And cloud thy banner in a dim eclipse;
Sic transit gloria gloria transic sic,
The mouth that speaketh useth its own lips.
Thus speeds the world, and thus our planet speeds;
What is, must be; and what can't be, is not;
Our acts unwise are not our wisest deeds,
And what we do is what ourselves have done;
Mistakes remembered are not faults forgot,
And we must wait for day to see the sun.