America

The American Spirit Speaks: To the Judge of Right and Wrong With Whom fulfillment lies Our purpose and our power belong, Our faith and sacrifice. Let Freedom's land rejoice! Our ancient bonds are riven; Once more to use the eternal choice Of good or ill is given. Not at a little cost, Hardly by prayer or tears, Shall we recover the road we lost In the drugged and doubting years. But after the fires and the wrath, But after searching and pain, His Mercy opens us a path To live with ourselves again. In the Gates of Death rejoice! We see and hold the good -- Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice For Freedom's brotherhood. Then praise the Lord Most High Whose Strength hath saved us whole, Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die And not the living Soul!

Rudyard Kipling

Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhatten Bay, The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away: Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land. No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee, While friends are fighting for thy cause beyond the guardian sea: The battle that they wage is thine; thou fallest if they fall; The swollen flood of Prussian pride will sweep unchecked o'er all. O cruel is the conquer-lust in Hohenzollern brains; The paths they plot to gain their goal are dark with shameful stains: No faith they keep, no law revere, no god but naked Might; -- They are the foemen of mankind. Up, Liberty, and smite! Britain, and France, and Italy, and Russia newly born, Have waited for thee in the night. Oh, come as comes the morn. Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise, With steady hope and mighty help to join th brave Allies. O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire, Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom's altar-fire: For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the warlords cease, And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace.

Henry van Dyke April 10, 1917

Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day When first they challenged freeman to the fray, And with the Briton dared the American. Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man: Labour and Justice now shall have their way, And in a League of Peace -- God grant we may -- Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan. Sure is our hope since he who led your nation Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe Of that high call to work the world's salvation;         Clearing your minds of all estrangling blindness In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law,         Freedom and Honour and sweet Lovingkindness.

Robert Bridges April 30, 1917

It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town, A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house pacing up and down. Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play; Or through the market, on the well-worn stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away. A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain work shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all. He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. He is among us: -- as in times before! And we who toss and lie awake for long Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep? Too many peasants fight, they know not why, Too many homesteads in black terror weep. The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now The bitterness, the folly, and the pain. He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn Shall come; -- the shining hope of Europe free: The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp, and Sea. It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again>?

Vachel Lindsay

I saw her first abreast the Boston Light At anchor; she had just come in, turned head, And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down. I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed The cable out from her careening bow, I moved upon the swell, shut steam and lay Hove to in my old launch to look at her. She'd come in light, a-skimming up the Bay Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full; And all her noble lines from bow to stern Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode The morning air like those thin clouds that turn Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds From calm sea-courses. There in smoke-smudged coats, Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then; The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom Of the New England coast that tardily Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb. The State-house glittered on old Beacon Hill, Gold in the sun. . . . 'Twas all so fair awhile; But she was fairest -- this great square-rigged ship That had blown in from some far happy isle On from the shores of the Hesperides. They caught her in a South Atlantic road Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat; "Wheat's contraband," they said, and blew her hull To pieces,murdered one of our staunch fleet, Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships That carry trade for us on the high sea And warped out of each horbor in the States. It wasn't law, so it seems strange to me -- A big mistake. Her keel's struck bottom now And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep Through the set sails; but never, never more Her crew will stand away to brace and trim, Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up To windward on the Gulf-Stream's stormy rim; Never again she'll head a no'theast gale Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb, And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light, To make the harbor glad because she's home.

Jeanne Robert Foster