wrote it out, letting her pencil shape blindly the words she did not even try to see. This was her habit in com posing verses. Later in the day she was able to decipher the hastily scrawled lines which she probably could not have unraveled after a longer delay. And thus our valued Battle Hymn was preserved to us. This hymn was first sung by Chaplain McCabe, and he sang it first while in Libby Prison. "And then," Mrs. Howe modestly concluded, "after Chaplain McCabe's splendid voice had sung it and the soldiers had taken it up and the North was learning to love it, then people began to ask who wrote it." "Julia Ward Howe felt her heart throb with sympathy for a million slaves. She was oppressed with the thought of the great sin that her nation had committed. She saw the gathering of myriads of fighting men to overwhelm the defenders of slavery. She has seen the camp-fires of the soldiers in those ninety forts that encircled and defended Washington. It comes to her that God Himself is moving in the midst of this army, that He has pronounced His will, and that His omnipotent power is on the side of the North. As we think of this host of soldiers, of this just cause, of the aroused wrath of God, there comes a determination that this rebellion shall be quelled, that this blot shall be removed, that men shall be tested by fire and by blood. All this shall be done, it cannot be prevented, for God has willed it. In an upper room in a lodging house in London, a group of war correspondents are celebrating the approach of war in the Soudan. Led by the veteran, the Nilghai, they sing the American song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." They sing the first stanza, and the second, and the third, and the fourth. Then they pause. Cassavetti, the Frenchman, proud of his knowledge, starts the last verse, — but grizzled old Torpenhow, the veteran of a dozen campaigns, holds up his hand and says, 'Hold on. We've nothing to do with that. That belongs to another man.'” Sherman and Reed. Essentials, pp. 9-11. This is the greatest war song in the language to declare God's irresistible power and to point through fiercest conflict to certain triumph and to peace. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES 1. Tell how the Battle Hymn came to be written and sung. 2. Why did God seem to be the moving force in the efforts to put down slavery? 3. Explain the first line; the second. 4. In what sense had they "builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps"? 5. What is the "righteous sentence"? 6. Interpret in your own words the "fiery gospel" in the third stanza. 7. Explain the second line in stanza four. 8. Why did the last stanza so affect the grizzled old Torpenhow? 9. What change in the wording of the refrain at the close of each stanza? 10. What is added to the meaning of the refrain with each successive stanza? 11. What is the secret of the power of this poem over the hearts of men? Father Abraham. REFERENCES KEY: Star Spangled Banner. SMITH: America. EMMETT: Dixie. Bonnie Blue Flag. When Johnnie Comes Marching Home. FINCH: The Blue and the Gray. BRYANT: The Battlefield. LONGFELLOw: The Arsenal. HOPKINSON: Hail Columbia! THE LADY OF THE GREY ISLE N. A. CRAWFORD T is easier to plan great things than to do them. Many of us with the best of intentions plan to accomplish much. When we are face to face with the tasks, we find the tasks are harder than we thought. The hero in the following story thought he could accomplish much more than he was able to do. When confronted by all the terrors of his task, his heart failed him. The great dragon with a roar so fierce that the castle quaked, coming with wide-open jaws from which great flames and black smoke issued, caused the stout heart of the knight to quail, and it is not strange that he turned and fled without accomplishing the task he had set for himself. This intensely vivid and interesting story springs from a folk-tale of the Middle Ages. It was handed down orally for many generations and was finally written in brief story form by Sir John Mandeville in his "Voiage and Travaile." Upon this incident the poet, William Morris, has based his beautiful poem, "The Lady of the Land" in his "Earthly Paradise." The story as here given is an adaptation of these earlier stories in imitation of the style of the folk-tales of the Middle Ages. THE LADY OF THE GREY ISLE In a far-off sea, as wayfaring men tell, is a grey rock island, bleak and windswept and ever washed by the tumbling waters. And as men pass the isle, often they hear a voice, as it were the voice of the sweetest singer this side Paradise. And ever she sings in words that the sailors know, whether they be English or French or even Saracens. And these are in English the words of the song: Grey is the day, (Doom, black doom.) Deep is the sigh Of a heart heaped high With doom, black doom. Many men there are who have heard the song, and many good knights withal, but they have heard the word "doom" and their souls have been chilled, for they have well deemed that the singer is some fair-seeming monster who would destroy them. But wise men say that a Christian knight, be he brave enough to go upon the isle and endure all the terrors that he shall see and hear, shall be lord of that grey isle and of many fair-fruitful islands that lie thereabout, and shall have to wife the most beautiful lady that has lived in the world since strong Troy was burned. But no knight may go with fighting men or with squire, for a knight that goeth thus shall be lost amid the grey rocks and shall be cast into the fierce-foaming waters. Once in the long ago, it is told, a good knight of Rhodes, hearing the song and pitying the unknown one who sang it, came upon the isle. Bleak it looked, and waste, and the chill rain and the drear-sounding salt sea joined to wash the grey rocks. As the knight stood on that forsaken shore, he heard again the voice of the singer, but now she sang new words, and more sadly sweet: |