Classic Poem

SUNDAY

Some would bring back the Puritan Sunday,
Call it the Sabbath as if we were Jews,
Make it illegal to laugh on that one day,
Force all the people to flock to the pews,
Saturday night put secular things aside,
Stop all the wheels of carriage and train.
Such narrow bigotry recklessly flings aside
Much of three centuries marvellous gain.

Read how the Puritans, gloomy and canting,
Hounded gay Morton of Wollaston Height,
Who Merrie England's good custom transplanting
Fain had made May-day a festival rite.
Music and dancing were works of the Devil,
Acting a play was sin beyond cure;
Joy must not rise above Piety's level,
Else would the Church of God never endure.

Spite of fanatics a sweet liberality
Blooms from the tough-fibered old Pilgrim roots,
Giving us freedom in place of formality,
Promising richer and joyfuller fruits.
Sunday men now as a holiday reckon
When cheerful pleasures may lure to the fields;
Mountain and beach and park and grove beckon;
Millions drink deep from the joy Nature yields.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

T HE Pilgrims who had never dreamt
Of breaking their allegiance,
Or thought that seas made them exempt
From loyalty's obedience.
Kept dear old England in their prayers
And paid their taxes yearly,
Feared treason worse than wolves and bears
And loved their king sincerely.

But in their offspring there had sprung
The seeds of Independence,
Which grew in vigor as the young
Saw Liberty's resplendence
Spread like a sunrise o'er the land;
And so when George opprest them
They rose and took a mighty stand
And he could not arrest them.

He tried his best at Bunker Hill,
At Yorktown, Saratoga;
And then the Rebels had their will
At Fort Ticonderoga.
For six years they had stoutly fought
With Washington to lead them;
The war with loss and sorrow fraught
Had tried them, joined them, freed them.

Thirteen disjointed scattered States
Were welded in one nation.
By death and ruin God creates;
Destruction brings salvation.
So on the Fourth of each July
We celebrate this wonder;
From every schoolhouse banners fly,
The deep-voiced cannon thunder.

Bells ring and noisy squibs explode;
We read the Declaration;
The fervid bard declaims his ode,
Hearts swell with true elation.
At night the sky's with rockets gay,
The crowd with rapture gazes;
Hurrah for Independence Day,
When Patriotism blazes!

No wonder men whose ancestors
Fought for the Revolution,
That most legitimate of wars
That wrought our Constitution,
Are proud to claim that right of birth
As founders of the nation.
But let them prove their special worth
By special consecration.

Those who have lateliest crost the main
Clasp hands with hearts united,
And swear the Union to maintain,
By those great deeds incited.
Give true democracy the chance
Through work and education
And who can measure the advance
Toward Soul-emancipation?

The Civil War wrought costliest test
Of theories and actions:
The North and South, the East and West,
Divided into factions
We found could never stand alone;
So discords are compounded.
From are to is our name has grown
Since July Fourth was founded.

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY

C ALM , aloof, self-poised and serious,
Awe-inspiring, stern, imperious,
Draped in Legend's roseate mystery,
On the Brocken-haze of History
Looms, colossal, Washington.
Muster names of heroes, sages,
Kings and vikings from the pages
Of the chronicles wisdom-treasured
Who with him can e'er be measured?
They are stars — he is the sun!

Brave, unwearied, self-forgetful,
Risking fortune, unregretful,
Royal crown and scepter spurning,
For life's tranquil pleasures yearning
Still he bore the patriot-part.
When the war-storm darkest lowered
He refused to play the coward;
All serene, with trust unbroken,
He accepted Freedom's token;
Faith sublime sustained his heart.

Since that day his hand has beckoned
Freedom-hungry souls unreckoned.
They have flocked across the ocean
With a marvellous devotion
To ideals his name inspires.
Some were serfs forlorn, forsaken;
In the new home they have taken
Manhood's crown, the freeman's burden,
And they share the priceless guerdon
Won for all men by our sires.

LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

A S back we look across the ages
A few great figures meet the eye —
Kings, prophets, warriors, poets, sages —
Whose names and deeds will never die.

The rest are all forgotten, perished
Like trees in trackless forests vast,
But those whose memory men have cherished
Seem living still and have no past.

Not always of high race or royal
These messengers of God to men,
But lowly-born, true-hearted, loyal,
They wielded sword or brush or pen.

Such was our Lincoln, who forever
Is hailed as Freer of the Slave,
Whose lofty purpose and endeavor
New hope to hopeless bondsmen gave,

Gaunt, hewed as if from rugged boulders,
He bore a world of care and woe,
Which creased his brow and bent his shoulders,
And as a martyr laid him low.

And so we tell our sons his story,
We celebrate his humble birth,
And crown his deeds with all the glory
That men can offer on this earth.

Hail, Lincoln! As the swift years lengthen
Still more majestic grows thy fame;
The ties that bind us to thee strengthen;
Starlike-immortal shines thy name!

LABOR DAY

T HE iron-muscled men of toil,
Who strive all day from morn till night
To force subsistence from the soil,
To keep the furnace-fires alight,
Who hammer brass or rivet steel,
Who bind the book or twist the rope,
Have in their breast the heart to feel
And cheer their lives with rosy hope.

They know that work ennobles man,
Though wealth be won by Fortune's stroke,
That Union was the master plan
Which high ambition first awoke
In downcast Labor's long distress
And gave the sluggish tongue a voice
Their cherished grievances to express
And offered boundless fields for choice.

And so to prove their new-won powers
They quit their work and think it play
To march through dusty streets for hours
On summer's final holiday.
Their banners bear their mottoes proud,
They hold their heads exultant-high;
Their strides are long, their cheers are loud,
The lures of leisure they defy.

Who grudges Labor what he's won?
His triumph is a land's increase!
'Tis his to make it that the sun
Bring in the universal peace.
Oh may that power be wielded well;
May friendliness, good-will, content
All evil elements dispel
Throughout the western continent!