Each Fights for All

The sons of light in every age and zone,
Though on the cross, the gibbet, or the throne,
Now armed with love, the martyrs of a faith,
And now with steel, the anointed priests of death,
Who shed the tyrant’s or their own best blood,
Stand rank to rank one serried brotherhood;
Moses who smote the Egyptian to the dust,
With him who died the Just for the unjust;
Deep-thoughted Plato with his mystic “word,”
And fiery Cromwell armed with Gideon’s sword,
Melancthon mild, with Luther roughly strong—
That storm-plowed crag with its lark’s nest of song;
Fair tyrant-slayers, Jael and Corday,
With brave Grace Darling plucking ocean’s prey
Out of his foaming jaws, and her, as brave,
That Nightingale whose music ’tis to save;
All free strong natures, beautiful and clear,
Who make earth better, and the heavens more near,
Servants of God—the sacramental host
Who bear his banners down the invaded coast
Of flying darkness, form one dauntless corps,
To whom yon million worlds add countless thousands more.

A thousand rivers swell the same free surge,
A hundred ways to one fair town converge,
And rock, and tree, and treasures of the mine,
In one grand temple, one sweet home combine
So meet all gifts in service of the One
Who rays them out as from a central sun.

He builds for all who builds by inward law,
For years unborn, and lands he never saw:
The smallest insect in the coral reef,
Unseen, unseeing, and of life so brief,
With pulpy arms too powerless to command
The ponderous motions of a grain of sand,
Weaving at once his vest and burial robe,
Lays the foundations of the solid globe ;
So true work grows and least at last is great,
And each serves All in one well-ordered state.
The sword Harmodius on the tyrant drew,
if justly drawn, struck well for me and you;
The song of Miriam, by the avenging sea,
Was sung for bondmen on the dark Santee ;
The people’s cry that crumbled the Bastile,
Was the old shout that made first darkness reel.
When Spartan valor kept that narrow pass
Where Freedom fell with slain Leonidas,
Not Persia’s millions could subdue the braves,
Nor all the centuries trampling on their graves:
They strike for Freedom in her every blow—
Their deed sheds light on every dauntless brow;
Who dares to die to make a people free,
Still guards unconquered his Thermopolae:
Hope of the nations—heir of pure renown,
Though named Leonidas or OLD JOHN BROWN!
A gallant spirit never breathed our air,
But left some touch of nobler being there ;
No heart of pity soothed a brother’s pain,
But sent some pulse to life’s remotest vein :
A soul of truth becomes a Name of power—
The saving watchword of a crisis’ hour :
Around great natures, with no trumpet-call,
The peoples rally, proud to fight and fall:
They choose their lords as doth the lioness,
Who wins the battle, wins their love’s caress.
What though, as round their rival chiefs they crowd,
A hundred war-cries shake their streamers proud,
Till all that clamor to pained ears might seem
The wild disorder of a frenzied dream ;
One spirit rears each burning Gonfalon,
And men are clanships because Man is one!