And, blest by Thee, our present pain

Be Liberty's eternal gain,

Thy will be done!

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys,

The anthem of the destinies !

The minor of Thy loftier strain,

Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain,

Thy will be done!

Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,

Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
Our faith and patience; wherefore should we
leap

On one hand into fratricidal fight,

Or, on the other, yield eternal right,

Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound? What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage

ground

Our feet are planted: let us there remain
In unrevengeful calm, no means untried
Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,
The sad spectators of a suicide!

They break the links of Union: shall we light
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain

On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Draw we not even now a freer breath,

As from our shoulders falls a load of death
Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore
When keen with life to a dead horror bound?
Why take we up the accursed thing again?
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag
With its vile reptile blazon. Let us press
The golden cluster on our brave old flag

In closer union, and, if numbering less, Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.

16th, 1st month, 1861.

"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."

(LUTHER'S HYMN.)

E wait beneath the furnace-blast

WR

The pangs of transformation;

Not painlessly doth God recast

And mould anew the nation.

Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;

Nor spares the hand

That from the land

Uproots the ancient evil.

The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared.
Its bloody rain is dropping;

The poison plant the fathers spared

All else is overtopping.

East, West, South, North,

It curses the earth;

All justice dies,

And fraud and lies

Live only in its shadow.

What gives the wheat-field blades of steel? What points the rebel cannon?

What sets the roaring rabble's heel

On the old star-spangled pennon?

What breaks the oath

Of the men o' the South?

What whets the knife

For the Union's life?

Hark to the answer: Slavery!

Then waste no blows on lesser foes

In strife unworthy freemen.