The Day of God

All blessings walk with onward feet;
     No day dawn twice, no night comes back;
The car of doom, or slow or fleet,
     Rolls down an unreturning track.

What we have been, we cannot be:
     Forward, inexorable Fate
Points mutely to her own decree, 
     Beyond her hour is all too late.

God reaps his judgment-field to-day, 
     And sifts the darnel from the wheat;
A whirlwind sweeps the chaff away, 
     And fire the refuge of deceit.

Once in a century only blooms
     The flower of fortune so sublime
As now hangs budded o'er the tombs 
     Of the great fathers of old time.

Eternal Justice sits on high
     And gathers in her awful scales
Our shame and glory—Slavery's lie 
     And Freedom's starry countervails.

When falls her sword, as fall it must 
     In red Bellona's fiery van,
Let the old anarch bite the dust.
     And rise the rescued rights of Man.

In vain a nation's bloody sweat,
     The sob of myriad hearts in vain, 
If the scotched snake may live to not 
     Its venom in our flesh again.

Priests of an altar fired once more 
     For Freedom in His awful name,
Who trod the wine-press, dripping gore, 
     And gave the Law in lurid flame,— 

Oh, not in human wrath, that wreaks
     Revenge for wrong, and blood for blood;
Not in the fiery will that seeks
     Brute power in battle's stormy flood,—

Go forth, redeemers of a land,
     Sad, stern, and fearless for the Lord 
Solemn and calm, with firm right hand
     Laid to the sacrificial sword.

The lords of treason and the whip
     Have called you to the dread appeal
From the loud cannon’s fevered lip, 
     And the wide flash of bristling steel.

If now the echo of that voice
     Slake down their prison-house of wrong, 
They have their own perfidious choice;
     For God in good, and Trush is strong.

Their steel draws lightning, and the bolt
     But iron their own volcanic mine;
God in their vineyard of Revolt
     Treads out his sacramental wine!

Be this our conquest, —as they gave
     Their all to Treason and the Chain,
We snap the fetter from the slave,
     And make our sole revenge their gain!