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Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year,
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot.
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown

yet faint thou not.

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust
When they who helped thee flee in fear,

Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here.

Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.

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COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN (1843)

BY DAVID T. SHAW AND THOMAS À BECKET

O COLUMBIA, the gem of the ocean,

The Home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee!
Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When Liberty's form stands in view;
Thy banners make Tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white and blue.

Chorus

When borne by the red, white, and blue,
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
Thy banners make Tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white, and blue.

When war winged its wide desolation

And threatened the land to deform,
The ark then of Freedom's foundation,
Columbia, rode safe thro' the storm;
With her garlands of vict'ry around her,
When so proudly she bore her brave crew,
With her flag proudly floating before her,

The boast of the red, white, and blue. - Cho.

The wine cup, the wine cup bring hither,
And fill you it true to the brim;

May the wreaths they have won never wither,
Nor the star of their glory grow dim!

May the service united ne'er sever,

But they to their colors prove true!

The Army and Navy forever!

Three cheers for the red, white, and blue! - Cho.

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Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

THE PRESENT CRISIS (1844)

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

[This poem was written in 1844, when the annexation of Texas was a topic of general discussion.]

5 WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

10 Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

15 So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right

or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right.

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong,

And, albeit she wanders outcast now, I see around her

throng

Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

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