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They who were comrades of that shadow host,
And the young brood whose veins renew the fires
That burned in their great sires,

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Remembered or forgotten, but a part

Of the great beating of the Nation's heart!
A call to sacrifice!

A call to victory!

Hark, in the Empyrean

The battle birds!

The bugles!

UNMANIFEST DESTINY

To what new fates, my country, far
And unforeseen of foe or friend,
Beneath what unexpected star,

Compelled to what unchosen end,

Across the sea that knows no beach
The Admiral of Nations guides
Thy blind obedient keels to reach

The harbor where thy future rides!

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The guns that spoke at Lexington
Knew not that God was planning then
The trumpet word of Jefferson

To bugle forth the rights of men.

To them that wept and cursed Bull Run,
What was it but despair and shame ?
Who saw behind the cloud the sun?
Who knew that God was in the flame?

Had not defeat upon defeat,

Disaster on disaster come,
The slave's emancipated feet

Had never marched behind the drum.

There is a Hand that bends our deeds
To mightier issues than we planned,
Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds,
My country, serves Its dark command.

I do not know beneath what sky
Nor on what seas shall be thy fate;

I only know it shall be high,

I only know it shall be great.

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-July, 1898.

LOVE IN THE WINDS

WHEN I am standing on a mountain crest,
Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,
My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,
Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;
My heart bounds with the horses of the sea,
And plunges in the wild ride of the night,
Flaunts in the teeth of tempest the large glee

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That rides out Fate and welcomes gods to fight.
Ho, love, I laugh aloud for love of you,

Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather,
No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew,
But hale and hardy as the highland heather,
Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,
Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills.

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WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

1869

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MR. MOODY was born at Spencer, Indiana, and was graduated in 1893 from Harvard, where for a time he was an assistant in English. Later he became a member of the English department at the University of Chicago. While in college the unusual excellence of his verse was a matter of comment, and he has more than fulfilled his early promise. He has already published two volumes of poetry of marked power, and much is expected of him in the future.

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

(FROM "AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION")

THE wars we wage

Are noble, and our battles still are won

By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.

We have not sold our loftiest heritage.

The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat
And scramble in the market place of war;

Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.

Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,

This delicate and proud New England soul

Who leads despisëd men, with just-unshackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.

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Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand
All night he lay, speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,
Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine,

Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,
They swept, and died like freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust
Obscurely in a common grave with him
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with dissolved limb
In nature's busy old democracy

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To flush the mountain laurel when she blows

Sweet by the southern sea,

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And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:

The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew

This mountain fortress for no earthly hold

Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old

Of spiritual wrong,

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Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,
Expugnable but by a nation's rue

And bowing down before that equal shrine

By all men held divine,

Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.

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WE ARE OUR FATHERS' SONS

(FROM "AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION")

WE are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!

'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry

Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die !"
Then Alabama heard,

And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho

Shouted a burning word;

Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,
East, west, and south, and north,

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Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,

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By the unforgotten names of eager boys

Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung
With the old mystic joys

And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,
But that the heart of youth is generous,

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We charge you, ye who lead us,

Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain !

Turn not their new-world victories to gain !

One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays
Of their dear praise,

noon,

One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,
The implacable republic will require ;
With clamor, in the glare and gaze of
Or subtly, coming as a thief at night,
But surely, very surely, slow or soon
That insult deep we deeply will requite.
Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!
For save we let the island men go free,
Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts
Will curse us from the lamentable coasts
Where walk the frustrate dead.

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