Toil through the stertorous death of the Night,
Toil, when wild brother-wars new dark the Light,
Toil, and forgive, and kiss o'er, and replight.

Now Praise to God's oft-granted grace,
Now Praise to Man's undaunted face,
Despite the land, despite the sea,
I was I am and I shall be -

How long, Good Angel, O how long?
Sing me from Heaven a man's own song!

"Long as thine Art shall love true love,
Long as thy Science truth shall know,
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove,
Long as thy Law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy brother every man below,
So long, dear.Land of all my love,

Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!"

O Music, from this height of time my Word unfold:

In thy large signals all men's hearts Man's Heart behold:

Mid-heaven unroll thy chords as friendly flags unfurled,

And wave the world's best lover's welcome to the world.

SIDNEY LANIER.

CENTENNIAL HYMN.

[Sung at the opening of the International Exposition in Philadelphia, May 10, 1876.]

OUR fathers' God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,

We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and thee,
To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.

Here, where of old, by thy design,
The fathers spake that word of thine,
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou, who hast here in concord furled
The war-flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfill
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back the Argonauts of peace.

For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,

We thank thee, while, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought or sold!

O, make thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
JOHN G. WHITTIER.

THE NATIONAL ODE.

READ AT THE CELEBRATION IN INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876.

I. — 1.

SUN of the stately Day,

Let Asia into the shadow drift,
Let Europe bask in thy ripened ray,
And over the severing ocean lift
A brow of broader splendor!
Give light to the eager eyes

Of the Land that waits to behold thee rise:
The gladness of morning lend her,
With the triumph of noon attend her,
And the peace of the vesper skies!
For lo she cometh now

With hope on the lip and pride on the brow,
Stronger, and dearer, and fairer,

To smile on the love we bear her,
To live, as we dreamed her and sought her,
Liberty's latest daughter!

In the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places,
We found her traces;

On the hills, in the crash of woods that fall,
We heard her call;

When the lines of battle broke,

We saw her face in the fiery smoke;
Through toil, and anguish, and desolation,

We followed, and found her

With the grace of a virgin Nation
As a sacred zone around her!
Who shall rejoice

With a righteous voice,

Far-heard through the ages, if not she?
For the menace is dumb that defied her,

The doubt is dead that denied her,

And she stands acknowledged, and strong, and

free!

II. 1.

Ah, hark! the solemn undertone
On every wind of human story blown.
A large, divinely-molded Fate

Questions the right and purpose of a State,
And in its plan sublime

Our eras are the dust of Time.
The far-off Yesterday of power

Creeps back with stealthy feet,
Invades the lordship of the hour,
And at our banquet takes the unbidden seat.
From all unchronicled and silent ages
Before the Future first begot the Past,

Till History dared, at last,

To write eternal words on granite pages;
From Egypt's tawny drift, and Assur's mound,

And where, uplifted white and far,
Earth highest yearns to meet a star,
And Man his manhood by the Ganges found,
Imperial heads, of old millennial sway,

And still by some pale splendor crowned, Chill as a corpse-light in our full-orbed day, In ghostly grandeur rise

And say, through stony lips and vacant eyes: "Thou that assertest freedom, power, and fame, Declare to us thy claim!"

I. — 2.

On the shores of a Continent cast,
She won the inviolate soil
By loss of heirdom of all the Past,
And faith in the royal right of Toil!
She planted homes on the savage sod:

Into the wilderness lone
She walked with fearless feet,
In her hand the divining-rod,
Till the veins of the mountains beat

With fire of metal and force of stone! She set the speed of the river-head

To turn the mills of her bread; She drove her plowshare deep Through the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep; To the South, and West, and North, She called Pathfinder forth,

Her faithful and sole companion,
Where the flushed Sierra, snowy-starred,
Her way to the sunset barred,
And the nameless rivers in thunder and foam
Channeled the terrible canyon!

Nor paused, till her uttermost home
Was built, in the smile of a softer sky
And the glory of beauty still to be,
Where the haunted waves of Asia die
On the strand of the world-wide sea!

Some fierce Titanic joy of conquest knows :
Whether in veins of serf or king,
Our ancient blood beats restless in repose.
Challenge of Nature unsubdued
Awaits not Man's defiant answer long;
For hardship, even as wrong,
Provokes the level-eyed, heroic mood.
This for herself she did; but that which lies,
As over earth the skies,
Blending all forms in one benignant glow, -
Crowned conscience, tender care,
Justice, that answers every bondman's prayer,
Freedom where Faith may lead or Thought may
dare,

The power of minds that know,
Passion of hearts that feel,

Purchased by blood and woe,
Guarded by fire and steel,

Hath she secured? What blazon on her shield,
In the clear Century's light
Shines to the world revealed,
Declaring nobler triumph, born of Right?

I. - 3.

Foreseen in the vision of sages,

Foretold when martyrs bled, She was born of the longing of ages, By the truth of the noble dead And the faith of the living fed! No blood in her lightest veins Frets at remembered chains, Nor shame of bondage has bowed her head. In her form and features still

The unblenching Puritan will, Cavalier honor, Huguenot grace, The Quaker truth and sweetness, And the strength of the danger-girdled race Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness.

From the homes of all, where her being began,

She took what she gave to Man :

Justice, that knew no station,

Belief, as soul decreed,

Free air for aspiration,

Free force for independent deed!

She takes, but to give again,
As the sea returns the rivers in rain;
And gathers the chosen of her seed
From the hunted of every crown and creed.
Her Germany dwells by a gentler Rhine;
Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine;
Her France pursues some dream divine;
Her Norway keeps his mountain pine;
Her Italy waits by the western brine;
And, broad-based under all,

Is planted England's oaken-hearted mood,
As rich in fortitude

As e'er went worldward from the island-wall!
Fused in her candid light,

To one strong race all races here unite:
Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen
Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan;
'T was glory, once, to be a Roman ;
She makes it glory, now, to be a Man!

For the pride of thine exultation
O'er peril conquered and strife subdued!
But half the right is wrested

When victory yields her prize,
And half the marrow tested

When old endurance dies.

In the sight of them that love thee,
Bow to the Greater above thee!

He faileth not to smite
The idle ownership of Right,
Nor spares to sinews fresh from trial,
And virtue schooled in long denial,
The tests that wait for thee

In larger perils of prosperity.

Here, at the Century's awful shrine,
Bow to thy Father's God - and thine!

I. - 4.

Behold! she bendeth now, Humbling the chaplet of her hundred years: There is a solemn sweetness on her brow, And in her eyes are sacred tears. Can she forget, In present joy, the burden of her debt,

When for a captive race

She grandly staked and won

The total promise of her power begun,
And bared her bosom's grace

To the sharp wound that inly tortures yet?
Can she forget

The million graves her young devotion set,
The hands that clasp above
From either side, in sad, returning love?
Can she forget,

Here, where the Ruler of to-day,
The Citizen of to-morrow,
And equal thousands to rejoice and pray
Beside these holy walls are met,

Her birth-cry, mixed of keenest bliss and sorrow?
Where, on July's immortal morn

Held forth, the People saw her head
And shouted to the world: "The King is dead,
But lo! the Heir is born!"
When fire of Youth, and sober trust of Age,
In Farmer, Soldier, Priest, and Sage,
Arose and cast upon her

Baptismal garments, never robes so fair
Clad prince in Old-World air,
Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor!

II. — 4.

Arise! Recrown thy head,
Radiant with blessing of the Dead!
Bear from this hallowed place

The prayer that purifies thy lips,

The light of courage that defies eclipse,
The rose of Man's new morning on thy face!
Let no iconoclast

Invade thy rising Pantheon of the Past,

To make a blank where Adams stood, To touch the Father's sheathed and sacred blade, Spoil crowns on Jefferson and Franklin laid, Or wash from Freedom's feet the stain of Lin

coln's blood!

Hearken, as from that haunted hall
Their voices call:

"We lived and died for thee:
We greatly dared that thou might'st be;
So, from thy children still

We claim denials which at last fulfill,
And freedom yielded to preserve thee free!
Beside clear-hearted Right
That smiles at Power's uplifted rod,
Plant Duties that requite,
And Order that sustains, upon thy sod,
And stand in stainless might
Above all self, and only less than God!"

III.-1.

Here may thy solemn challenge end, All-proving Past, and each discordance die

O sacred Woman-Form,

Of the first People's need and passion wrought,
No thin, pale ghost of Thought,
But fair as Morning and as heart's-blood warm,
Wearing thy priestly tiar on Judah's hills ;
Clear-eyed beneath Athene's helm of gold;
Or from Rome's central seat
Hearing the pulses of the Continents beat

In thunder where her legions rolled;
Compact of high heroic hearts and wills,
Whose being circles all

The selfless aims of men, and all fulfills ;
Thyself not free, so long as one is thrall ;
Goddess, that as a Nation lives,
And as a Nation dies,
That for her children as a man defies,
And to her children as a mother gives,
Take our fresh fealty now!

No more a Chieftainess, with wampum-zone
And feather-cinctured brow,
No more a new Britannia, grown
To spread an equal banner to the breeze,
And lift thy trident o'er the double seas;
But with unborrowed crest,

In thine own native beauty dressed, The front of pure command, the unflinching eye, thine own!

III. - 3.

Look up, look forth, and on! There's light in the dawning sky: The clouds are parting, the night is gone :

Prepare for the work of the day!
Fallow thy pastures lie

And far thy shepherds stray,
And the fields of thy vast domain
Are waiting for purer seed

Of knowledge, desire, and deed, For keener sunshine and mellower rain! But keep thy garments pure: Pluck them back, with the old disdain, From touch of the hands that stain ! So shall thy strength endure, Transmute into good the gold of Gain, Compel to beauty thy ruder powers, Till the bounty of coming hours Shall plant, on thy fields apart, With the oak of Toil, the rose of Art! Be watchful, and keep us so : Be strong, and fear no foe:

Be just, and the world shall know!
With the same love love us, as we give;
And the day shall never come,
That finds us weak or dumb
To join and smite and cry

In the great task, for thee to die,
And the greater task, for thee to live!

BAYARD TAYLOR.

THE PEOPLE'S SONG OF PEACE.

FROM THE "SONG OF THE CENTENNIAL."

THE grass is green on Bunker Hill,

The waters sweet in Brandywine; The sword sleeps in the scabbard still,

The farmer keeps his flock and vine; Then, who would mar the scene to-day With vaunt of battle-field or fray?

The brave corn lifts in regiments

Ten thousand sabers in the sun; The ricks replace the battle-tents, The bannered tassels toss and run. The neighing steed, the bugle's blast, These be but stories of the past.

The earth has healed her wounded breast,
The cannons plow the field no more;
The heroes rest! O, let them rest
In peace along the peaceful shore!
They fought for peace, for peace they fell;
They sleep in peace, and all is well.

The fields forget the battles fought, The trenches wave in golden grain: Shall we neglect the lessons taught,

And tear the wounds agape again? Sweet Mother Nature, nurse the land, And heal her wounds with gentle hand.

Lo! peace on earth. Lo! flock and fold,
Lo! rich abundance, fat increase,

And valleys clad in sheen of gold.
O, rise and sing a song of peace!
For Theseus roams the land no more,
And Janus rests with rusted door.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

NOT RIPE FOR POLITICAL POWER.

THE men whose minds move faster than their age,
And faster than society's dull flight,
Must bear the ribald railings and the rage
Of those who lag behind it. As the light
Plays on the horizon's verge before its night
Can penetrate life's dark and murky stage;
As the tired hadgi, on his pilgrimage,

Hears, ere he sees, the fountain bubbling bright; As the sweet smiles of infants promise youth, And martyr sufferings herald sacred truth,

So Thought flung forward is the prophecy Of Truth's majestic march, and shows the way Where future time shall lead the proud array Of peace, of power, and love of liberty.

SIR JOHN BOWRING.

THE REFORMER.

ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan, I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, Smiting the godless shrines of man

Along his path.

The Church beneath her trembling dome Essayed in vain her ghostly charm: Wealth shook within his gilded home With strange alarm.

Fraud from his secret chambers fled Before the sunlight bursting in : Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head To drown the din.

"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile; That grand old time-worn turret spare": Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,

Cried out, "Forbear!"

Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind, Groped for his old accustomed stone, Leaned on his staff, and wept to find

His seat o'erthrown.

Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes, O'erhung with paly locks of gold ; "Why smite," he asked in sad surprise, "The fair, the old?"