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As if, with Uriel's crown,

I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down!)

Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green

With all the common gifts of God.
For temperate airs and torrid sheen
Weave Edens of the sod;

Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold

Broad rivers wind their devious ways;
A hundred isles in their embraces fold
A hundred luminous bays;

And through yon purple haze
Vast mountains lift their plumëd peaks
cloud-crowned;

And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps,

An unhewn forest girds them grandly round,

In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze

Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest

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ers!

And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean's breast

Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers!

Bear witness with me in my song of praise, And tell the world that, since the world began,

No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays,
Or given a home to man.

But these are charms already widely blown!
His be the meed whose pencil's trace
Hath touched our very swamps with grace,
And round whose tuneful way

All Southern laurels bloom;

The Poet of "The Woodlands," unto whom Alike are known

The flute's low breathing and the trumpet's tone,

And the soft west wind's sighs;
But who shall utter all the debt,
O Land wherein all powers are met
That bind a people's heart,

The world doth owe thee at this day,

And which it never can repay,

Yet scarcely deigns to own!
Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing
The source wherefrom doth spring
That mighty commerce which, confined
To the mean channels of no selfish mart,
Goes out to every shore

Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships

That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips In alien lands;

Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; And gladdening rich and poor,

Doth gild Parisian domes,

Or feed the cottage - smoke of English homes,

And only bounds its blessings by mankind!
In offices like these, thy mission lies,
My Country! and it shall not end

As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend In blue above thee; though thy foes be hard

And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark; make thee great

In white and bloodless state;
And haply, as the years increase
Still working through its humbler reach
With that large wisdom which the ages
teach-

Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace!

As men who labor in that mine

Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed
Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead,
Hear the dull booming of the world of
brine

Above them, and a mighty muffled roar
Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on,
And split the rock, and pile the massive ore,
Or carve a niche, or shape the arched roof;
So I, as calmly, weave my woof

Of song, chanting the days to come,
Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air
Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each
dawn

Wakes from its starry silence to the hum Of many gathering armies. Still,

In that we sometimes hear,

Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I

know

The end must crown us, and a few brief years Dry all our tears,

I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget That there is much even Victory must regret.

And, therefore, not too long

From the great burthen of our country's

wrong

Delay our just release!

And, if it may be, save

These sacred fields of peace

From stain of patriot or of hostile blood! Oh, help us, Lord! to roll the crimson flood Back on its course, and, while our banners wing

Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling

To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate

There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays

Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas.

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