English

Columbia, trust the Lord, thy foes in vain Attempt thy ruin
and enforce their reign. Had they prevailed, darkness had closed our days,
And death and silence had forbid his praise; But we are
saved and live, let songs arise! Columbia, bless the God who built the skies.

Exhausted,
time to find a lodging—
hanging wisteria.

Out of the dark into the arms of love
The babe is born, and recks not of the way
His soul has traversed to confront the day:
Enough for him the face that smiles above,
The tireless feet that on his errands move,
The arms that clasp, the tender lips that kiss,
The whole dear wealth of welcome and of bliss
His heirship and his sovereignty that prove.

So may there be no place for Earth's vain tears
When Heaven's great rapture bursts upon the sight:—
Shall not the soul, new-born in heavenly spheres,

T RANSPARENT appears the radiant air,
Though steel and stone in its breast it may bear;
At length they'll meet with fiery power,
And metal and stones on the earth will shower.

Belgium, thy name great glory hath;
When might to baseness stooped, thy wrath
Withstood him in the battle path.

The towers that might have been thy trust
They burned and razed and beat to dust—
Still wast thou valiant and august.

We treasure all thy deathless tears;
No quenching through the endless years
Thy silent, solemn grandeur fears.

On every sea, on every strand,
Thy name for faithfulness shall stand,
Belgium, the brave, immortal land!

The everlasting years shall ring,

Where is it, righteousness, And I, poor sot, ah where?
Where is the path that joins This and that lot, ah where?

What hath devoutness to do And virtue with winebibbing?
Where is the preacher's drone And the wail of the rote, ah where?

My heart from the cloister-cell And hypocrisy's patch-coat turns:
Where is the wine unmixed And the Magians' grot, ah where?

Gone are the days of delight: Fair may their memory be!
Where is the languishing glance And the chiding, love-fraught, ah where?

Weary of life? But what if death
To new confusion bids?
Who knows if labor ends with breath,
Or tears with folded lids?

The spirit still may miss of rest,
Though oft the daisies blow
Above the hushed and darkened breast
Shut close from sun and snow.

Those halls, all curiously planned,
Lie void, but whither thence
Hath fled the tenant? Shall the wand
Of peace her dews dispense

In equal share to hearts that beat
Undaunted till the even,
And rebels whose unbidden feet

Where Jessie wrought her mission out—
A shortened chain of April days—
And stirred my faith and slew my doubt,
And woke the nursling Hope to praise.
There lingers yet some subtle trace
Through all the woodland solitude,
Some wistful beauty from her face,
Some touch of her dead maidenhood.

Her home was near, and in this glade
She told me of the Golden Gate,
With sweet-souled counsel wisely weighed
And faith that had not long to wait.
So have I made my journey here
Where first I found the Golden Way,

If they true bailiffs be, who for the law maintaining,
Do orphans overwhelm, and widows terrify,
And hamlets gobble up, the poor with sport disdaining,
I know not; but, I trow, a schout should ever try
To have the law of God and sovereign rights possess him,
The wrong with power by right and not by wrong suppressing.

No charm nor loveliness nor joy is stable.
Glory unfolded for a world's delight
Fades like a lover's tale, a song, a fable
Blown over by the cruel breath of reason
And lost to sound and sight.
Beauty that bourgeoned slowly through a season
Dies in a night.

For beauty dead we fill our hearts with weeping,
Yet never mark it pass beyond recall.
Shall only I, who once, like all men, sleeping
Felt not my gold transmute to baser metal,
With wakened eyes, see, bitterest of all,
Pale-hued and dark, petal by lovely petal