Jubilate

Ring, bells, ring as ye never run before!
Shout, cannon, shout with reverberating roar;
               Peal again your jubilation
               For the birth-day of a nation,
With the shrilling of the bugle, and the trumpet’s wild encore!
               Rolling westward with the jar
               O our dauntless palace car,
That is just Atlantic’s thunder breaking on Pacific’s shore!

Ring, bells, ring for a nation that is free!
Shout, cannon, shout for the year of jubilee!
               Not since Independence steeple
               Felt the rocking of the people
When their great heart shook the nations with a thunder tempest’s glee,
               Have ye had such right to pour
               Trumpet- blast and cannon roar,
And the wild delight of bell-tones rolling out from sea to sea!

Ring, bells, ring till ye crack your towers of oak;
Shout, cannon, shout through your lurid sulphur-smoke;
               Tell the nations where they slumber
               Under the tyrants without number,
How the morning of our freedom through the storm of battle broke!
               Oh, and tell them to be strong
               When they clench the throat of wrong,
And relax no iron finger while he breathes who bends a yoke!

Ring, bells, ring; it is honor’s iron clash!
Shout, cannon, shout; it is freedom’s thunder crash!
               In the grand regeneration
               Of a proud and peerless nation,
We have need to blush no longer at a bloody chain and lash!
               For our flag of beauty floats
               Over free men with free votes,
Oh, a thing of life and glory streaming like a meteor-flash!

Ring, bels, ring, with the jarring trump and drum;
Shout, cannon, shout; let the mountain echoes come
               With our dawn-cry’s joyous murmur,
               Swelling westward deeper, firmer,
Till the voice of forty millions drowns Pacific’s choral hum!
               “all are free!” in every tongue
               From the roots of Babel sprung

                              __________________

So let the nation’s heart leap up and overflow in song,
A fountain flashing with glad thought, free, jubilant, and strong,
As Miriam sand, and timbrels rang, when the Red Sea’s refluent tide
Whirled down like drifts of autumn leaves the enslaver’s power and pride!

How fast the waning century is narrowing to its close
Since the great fathers of the land in fiery valor rose,
Pledging their all, at honor's call, in battle's dread appeal,
And wrote the charter of our rights in lines of purpling steel!

For eight long years of deadly strife the British lion roared
Along our desolated fields, before his hireling horde, 
His Hessian crew, for gain who slew, till a strong arm hurled them back
And tamed the savage island brute with all his mongrel pack!

For like an angel of the Lord the soul of freedom stood,
And fired our dauntless fathers with her own heroic mood!
They saw, afar, her guiding star on the blue sky's banner flame,
And took that meteor symbol, to conquer in her name.

Then He who plants the nations, who makes and who destroys,
In whose right hand our empires are but as fragile toys,—
With that clear word by true men heard in every providence,
The Eternal Master spoke to man in His sublime events!

*O Land of boundless majesty, this day redeemed by me,
Build on the rock of justice your temple of the free;
Tis yours to teach the nations the eternal rights of man
And build a mighty empire on truth's diviner plan. 

“The old world moulders in decay, a fen of reeking things:
The idiot slug and venomed snake are in the halls of kings;
Crosier and crown shall crumble down where'er your light shall shine;
Earth wearies of the purple fraud that rules by ‘right divine.’

"To day ye are but feeble, victorious in your fight; 
Not by the fleshy arm of war, but by the power of right;
The strength of steel will bend and reel before the intrepid will
That makes eternal truth its law, and in darkness holds it still.

“Before a hundred birthdays your mighty realm shall be
One serried league of nations, with a hand on either sea!
O greatly blest, be thou the best,—the redeemer of all lands
Where the peoples groan in fetters and the robber crowned stands.

"I give you the broad valleys where the mighty rivers roll,
And the plains that stretch like ocean, —to make broad and free the soul!
And rainbow crowned, with heart profound, Niagara robed in mist, 
To be my voice of majesty and your freedom's grand high priest!

"Forget not Him who led you through seas of fire and blood,
When the measure of your grandeur shall extend from flood to flood;
For righteousness alone is peace, and a land is weak by sin
The door that opens to a wrong shall let my judgments in!

"The Power that stands forever, is forever just, and gives 
Rights equal, and protection to the poorest soul that lives:
As now in youth, be strong by truth, and your freedom's temple dome
Shall be established as a rock where the ages break in foam.

"But in the day when ye forget the truth that makes you freem
Ye plant in your goodly soil the seeds of ruin's fatal 
Whose harvest-home shall surely come in a feast to vengence given,
When all the firstborn of your land shall feed the kites of heaven!"

That Voice alas, unheeding—they spake with double tongue 
And nursed a lie at freedom's breast till the judgment hour was rung!
The crimes of years their long arrears heaped for a day of woe
That broke in thunder on our homes and laid our dearest low!

But the spirit of the fathers survived in many a son, 
The fiery tongues of 76 came down on '61;
The souls of men were thrilled again at freedom's battle-cry,
And eyes that wept for love looked proud as the brave went forth to die!

O land beloved! their valor saved, in this thy day of joy, 
Thou wilt remember those who fell, as a mother broods her boy
No nook so lone on ocean's zone, it was not called to share
In the great ransom of a land so loved, so strong, so fair!

Nor least among the glorious band—this jewel on the breast
Of the queenly Narragansett—Rhode Island— gave her best!
On Slocom’s bier we drop a tear, and glow with grateful flame
When the brave soldier shouts a cheer at gallant Burnside's name.

We greet the fair young face of Sprague that shone in danger's van,
Though he remember not his own true praise of our true man;
Even here we hit the granite grit, the firm Seaconnet rock, 
That turned from Little Washington the rebel's tidal shock!

He shook his flag of starry light against the rebel gate,
And led our brave Rhode Island boys where the death shots fell like hail!
In every fold that flag shall hold the memory of the slain,
With the murmur of the far-off field and the plash of its purple rain!

And we have graves whose flowers to-day are wet with loyal tears;
And young souls patient in their pain and the perished hopes of years;
As to a friend to these we bend, and for the land they saved
Breathe benedictions o'er the dead, for the perils that they braved.

But let our hearts be glad to-day, and sing as the free birds sing,
And mix with the joy of these young hearts In their lives' delightful Spring;
For out of the flame of battle came the mellow light of peace
Our freedom's broader franchise, and our chartered rights increase.

And teach these young souls in their youth that only the tree is strong,
And the cruel-eyed avengers come through the open door of wrong;
In the heart of the child keep undefiled, the simple faith in right,
The love of truth, and a conscience pure, as in God’s holy sight!

That thus our nation's future may be greater than its past,
As we march from good to better in a glory born lo last!
While the flag we bear, shall blend in air, its star with Orion's belt,
And its blue and red with the streaks of morn shall into the sunrise melt!