Classic Poem

Old Time has written, with unerring hand,
A hundred years upon the sea and land,
Has written, on the pathway of the spheres,
And on the walls of Heaven, a hundred years,
Since, poor and friendless, feeble and forlorn,
An infant nation to the world was born.
England, its mother, blind with jealous wrath,
And fain to sweep the intruder from her path,
Loosed all her war dogs with its earliest breath,
To hunt it down and worry it to death.
The startled winds and waters swiftly bore,
From land to land, from distant shore to shore,
The muttered thunder of her lion's roar.
The Russian eagle flapped his sable wing,
And croaked: “Beware, it is a dangerous thing
To break allegiance to a rightful king.”
Italia hid herself among her flowers.
Hispania sneered: “It is no quarrel of ours.”
The Porte Sublime exclaimed, from his divan:
“Allah, il allah! Let him whip who can.”
Greece, bowed and burdened, could no succor give;
But old Helvetia cried: “Vive l'enfant, vive;”
And France, by human sympathy beguiled,
Unfurled her fleur de lis, and kissed the child;
And brave men nursed him, and his sponsors stood
Through a baptism of fire, and tears, and blood.
Aye, brave men nursed him, with heart, mind and strength,
Through nakedness and famine, till at length
He grew in vigor, beauty, grace and size,
A wonder and a glory in men's eyes.
Frugal and self-reliant, wise and good,
With sinews knit by toil to hardihood;
With genius to devise and will to do,
Fearless of danger, to his conscience true,
He was, withal, a staunch republican,
Who, in despite of every bar and ban,
Stood forth to represent the rights of man.
And holding all men equal, all men free
To choose their government and rulers, he
No homage paid to lineal royalty,
To lofty birth, to kingly crown or creed,
But held him noble, who in word and deed
Was honest and sincere, upright and true,
In all that Heaven appointed him to do,
While lordly rulers watched, with jealous eyes
And grudging sympathy, his certain rise,
And failed to comprehend the grand intent
Of what they called “A wild experiment.”
He threw his starry banner to the breeze;
Sent out his armed ships to foreign seas;
Hurled back invasion, with an iron hand
And lion heart, from his beloved land;
Maintained the right against tyrannic wrong;
Made his defenses and his bulwarks strong,
And taught all men, upon the land and sea,
To treat his stars and stripes with courtesy.
Meanwhile he made just laws to govern all
His numerous children, whether great or small;
Cared for their interest with paternal care,
Removed the burdens that were hard to bear,
And in the commonwealth gave each his share;
Encouraged science, industry and art,
In field and forum, factory, mine and mart,
And won from winds and waters, sun and soil,
A wholesome competence by honest toil,
His fame went out to countries far away,
Where kings and kaisers held despotic sway,
And many an eager heart and stalwart arm
Forsook the ancient shop, the outworn farm,
And ventured all upon the wild sea foam,
To find in Freedom's land a freeman's home;
And, by degrees, the selfish old world grew
Into fraternal feeling with the new,
Until the children of all climes, all lands,
Beneath the stars and stripes, strike friendly hands;
And, as our hero prospered down the years,
Beyond all human hopes, all human fears,
He bought broad lands toward the setting sun,
And added States to those already won;
Surveyed his coasts and measured mountain chains;
Mined yellow gold from earth's prolific veins;
Fostered all learning with a liberal hand,
And built grand thoroughfares throughout the land;
Fettered the steam and curbed its stubborn force
To wing his ships and speed his iron horse,
From port to port, from busy mart to mart,
O'er mighty rivers, through the mountain's heart,
Until the clangor of his tread is heard
At morn and midnight, startling beast and bird,
From sea to sea, through every new-born State,
From the Atlantic to the Golden Gate.
The world has wiser grown since he began
To assert the inalienable rights of man,
The holy fire he kindled in the night,
On Freedom's altar, is still burning bright;
And all mankind see clearer in its light.
The stale opinions of a primal day,
And wrongs that bore from age to age their sway,
Holding in leash the consciences of men,
Are vanquished by free speech, free press, free pen.
He made the lightning his obedient slave,
To bear unuttered thought through wind and wave
To every ocean, continent and clime,
With speed that laughs at space and outruns Time.
Only a hundred years have gone their way
Since the young child was born, that is to-day
A giant, mighty, honored and renowned,
Admired and feared to earth's remotest bound;
On every barren coast and sea girt isle,
Where the waves murmur or the sunbeams smile,
On every mountain top and valley green,
Wherever track or trace of man has been,
The errant winds have syllabled his name,
And unseen fingers chronicled his fame.
And now his broad and beautiful domain
Stretches away o'er mountain peak and plain,
From boreal realms of bitter frost and snow,
To climes where citrons and bananas grow;
From Eastern hills that kiss the rosy dawn,
To the fair, sun-down shores of Oregon.
And Human Freedom, born of Love and Truth,
Fair with the beauty of eternal youth,
Waves the star-spangled banner in her hand
Above the continent, from strand to strand.