Sweet is the toil of peace,

Sweet is the year's increase,

To loyal men who live by Freedom's laws; And in war's fierce alarms

God gives stout hearts and arms

To freemen sworn to save a rightful cause. Fear none, trust God, maintain the right, And triumph in unbroken Union's might.

Welded in war's fierce flame,
Forged on the hearth of fame,

The sacred Constitution was ordained;

Tried in the fire of time,

Tempered in woes sublime,

An age was passed and left it yet unstained. God grant its glories still may shine,

While ages fade, forgotten, in time's slow decline!

Honor the few who shared

Freedom's first fight, and dared

To face war's desperate tide at the full flood; Who fell on hard-won ground,

And into Freedom's wound

Poured the sweet balsam of their brave hearts' blood. They fell; but o'er that glorious grave

Floats free the banner of the cause they died to save.

In radiance heavenly fair,

Floats on the peaceful air

That flag that never stooped from Victory's pride; Those stars that softly gleam,

Those stripes that o'er us stream,

In war's grand agony were sanctified; A holy standard, pure and free,

To light the home of peace, or blaze in victory.

Father, whose mighty power

Shields us through life's short hour,

To Thee we pray: Bless us and keep us free; All that is past forgive;

Teach us, henceforth, to live

That, through our country, we may honor Thee; And, when this mortal life shall cease,

Take Thou, at last, our souls to Thine eternal peace.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

KATHARINE LEE BATES

O BEAUTIFUL for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!

God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,

Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!

God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!

America! America!

May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!

God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

THE REPUBLIC

Extract from The Building of the Ship

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

THOU, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee, are all with thee!

AFTER all,

ONE COUNTRY 1

FRANK L. STANTON

One country, brethren! We must rise or fall
With the Supreme Republic. We must be
The makers of her immortality;

Her freedom, fame,

Her glory or her shame

Liegemen to God and fathers of the free!

1 From "Comes One With a Song," copyright, 1899. Used by

special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

After all

Hark! from the heights the clear, strong, clarion call And the command imperious: "Stand forth,

Sons of the South and brothers of the North!

Stand forth and be

As one on soil and sea

Your country's honor more than empire's worth!"

After all,

'Tis Freedom wears the loveliest coronal;

Her brow is to the morning; in the sod

She breathes the breath of patriots; every clod

Answers her call

And rises like a wall

Against the foes of liberty and God!

AMERICA

Extract from The Torch-Bearers

ARLO BATES

FOR, O America, our country! - land
Hid in the west through centuries, till men
Through countless tyrannies could understand
The priceless worth of freedom, once again
The world was new-created when thy shore
First knew the Pilgrim keels, that one last test
The race might make of manhood, nor give o'er
The strife with evil till it proved its best.
Thy true sons stand as torch-bearers, to hold

A guiding light. Here the last stand is made.