One morn is in the mighty heaven,

And one in our desire.

The cannon booms from town to town,

Our pulses are not less,

The joy-bells chime their tidings down,

Which children’s voices bless.

For He that flung the broad blue fold

O’er-mantling land and sea,

One third part of the sky unrolled

For the banner of the free.

The men are ripe of Saxon kind

To build an equal state, –

To take the statute from the mind,

And make of duty fate.

United States! the ages plead, –

Present and Past in under-song, –

Go put your creed into your deed,

Nor speak with double tongue.

For sea and land don’t understand,

Nor skies without a frown

See rights for which the one hand fights

By the other cloven down.

Be just at home; then write your scroll

Of honor o’er the sea,

And bid the broad Atlantic roll,

A ferry of the free.

And, henceforth, there shall be no chain,

Save underneath the sea

The wires shall murmur through the main

Sweet songs of LIBERTY.

The conscious stars accord above,

The waters wild below,

And under, through the cable wove,

Her fiery errands go.

For He that worketh high and wise,

Nor pauses in his plan,

Will take the sun out of the skies

Ere freedom out of man.

BOSTON HYMN
Read in Music Hall, January 1, 1863

The word of the Lord by night

To the watching Pilgrims came,

As they sat by the seaside,

And filled their hearts with flame.

God said, I am tired of kings,

I suffer them no more;

Up to my ear the morning brings

The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball

A field of havoc and war,

Where tyrants great and tyrants small

Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel, – his name is Freedom, –

Choose him to be your king;

He shall cut pathways east and west,

And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land

Which I hid of old time in the West,

As the sculptor uncovers the statue

When he has wrought his best;

I show Columbia, of the rocks

Which dip their foot in the seas,

And soar to the air-borne flocks

Of clouds, and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods;

Call in the wretch and slave:

None shall rule but the humble,

And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble,

No lineage counted great;

Fishers and choppers and ploughmen

Shall constitute a state.

Go, cut down trees in the forest,

And trim the straightest boughs;

Cut down trees in the forest,

And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together,

The young men and the sires,

The digger in the harvest field,

Hireling, and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house

They shall choose men to rule

In every needful faculty,

In church, and state, and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men

Can govern the land and sea,