The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave; For the deck it was their field of fame, Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, With thunders from her native oak, When the stormy winds do blow; The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, When the storm has ceased to blow; And the storm has ceased to blow. Thomas Campbell. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps, His days are marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel; "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. Julia Ward Howe. HIGH-TIDE ON THE COAST OF LINCOLNSHIRE. The old mayor climbed the belfry tower, The ringers run by two, by three; "Pull! if ye never pulled before; Good ringers, pull your best," quoth hee. Men say it was a "stolen tyde, The Lord that sent it, He knows all, The message that the bells let fall; By millions crouched on the old sea-wall. I sat and spun within the doore; My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes: Lay sinking in the barren skies; "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling Where the reedy Lindis floweth From the meads where melick groweth, "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling "For the dews will soone be falling; Leave your meadow grasses mellow, Mellow, mellow, Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow! Come uppe, Whitefoot! come uppe, Lightfoot! Hollow, hollow! Come uppe, Jetty! rise and follow; From the clovers lift your head! Come uppe, Whitefoot! come uppe, Lightfoot! If it be long-ay, long ago When I beginne to think howe long, Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong; Alle fresh the level pasture lay, And not a shadowe mote be seene, The swannerds, where their sedges are, Then some looked uppe into the sky, To where the goodly vessels lie, And where the lordly steeple shows. They sayde, "And why should this thing be, What danger lowers by land or sea? They ring the tune of Enderby. "For evil news from Mablethorpe, Of pyrate galleys, warping down,— For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe, They have not spared to wake the towne; But while the west bin red to see, I looked without, and lo! my sonne Came riding downe with might and main; He raised a shout as he drew on, Till all the welkin rang again: "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.) "The old sea-wall" (he cried) "is downe! Go sailing uppe the market-place!". He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he sayth; "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?" "Good sonne, where Lindis winds away And ere yon bells beganne to play, With that he cried and beat his breast; And rearing Lindis, backward pressed, Then madly at the eygre's breast Flung uppe her weltering walls again. Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout, Then beaten foam flew round about,— · Then all the mighty floods were out. |