Classic Poem

A thousand million eager marching feet
Go thundering onward to the unseen shore,
While upward through the human birth-gates beat
A thousand millions more.

Ye who take up the instrument of life,
Think not your heritage of joy was won
Without the waging of eternal strife
Beneath the wistful sun.

Your fathers challenged life with faith so vast
Achievement stands their monumental creed;
They sought no vindication from the past
Save in immortal deed.

O sacred Freedom, in life's holy war,
We pay the cost, however great it be,
Though ruined cities all the earth should scar
And ships go down at sea.

Then dare the billow and the fourfold blast,
Let each last reef and pennant be unfurled;
What though great Freedom cost us at the last
The wrecking of a world?