Let thy daughters wreathe their chaplets for the foreheads of the brave,
Let thy daughters trace their lineage from the patriot's honored grave;
Woman's love is built the strongest when it rests on woman's pride,
Better be a soldier's widow than a meek civilian's bride.
Onward let thine Eagles lead thee, where the livid Southern sun
Courts the incense for the heavens of a righteous battle won;
And the bright Potomac, winding through the fields unto the sea
Shall no longer mark the libel—what is bond and what is free.
Rising from the fierce ordeal washed in blood and purified,
See the future stretch before thee, limitless on every side;
And in all the deep'ning envy of the nations wed to sloth,
Mark the record of thy progress, see the mirror of thy growth.
Rising from thy purifying, like a giant from his rest,
Thou shalt find thy praise an echo from the East unto the West;
Thou shalt find thy love a message from the South unto the North,
Each its past mistake of duty finding out and casting forth.
And thy States in new communion, by the blood they all have shed,
Shall be wedded to each other in the pardon of the dead;
Each, a scale of steel to cover vital part from foreign wrong,
All, a coat of armor guarding that to which they All belong.
Thou shalt measure seas with navies, span the earth with iron rails,
Catch the dawn upon thy banner and the sunset on thy sails;
Northern halls of ice shall echo to thy sailor's merry note,
And the standard of thy soldier on the Southern isle shall float.
Turning to thy mother, England, thou shalt find her making boast
Of the Great Republic westward, born of strength that she has lost;
And thy Saxon blood shall join ye, never to be torn apart,
Moving onward to the future, hand in hand and heart to heart.
At the conclusion of this last reading, my boy, we separated. When we are "heart to heart" with England, my boy, the heart that is underneath may possibly have ceased to beat.