O Exile of the wrath of kings! 
    O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty! 
  The refuge of divinest things,
    Their record must abide in thee!

  First in the glories of thy front
    Let the crown-jewel, Truth, be found;
  Thy right hand fling, with generous wont,
    Love’s happy chain to farthest bound!

  Let Justice, with the faultless scales,
    Hold fast the worship of thy sons;
  Thy Commerce spread her shining sails
    Where no dark tide of rapine runs!

  So link thy ways to those of God,
    So follow firm the heavenly laws,
  That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,
    And storm-sped Angels hail thy cause!

  O Land, the measure of our prayers,
    Hope of the world in grief and wrong,
  Be thine the tribute of the years,
    The gift of Faith, the crown of Song!

THE WORMWOOD CORDIAL OF HISTORY.

WITH A FABLE.

The great war which is upon us is shaking us down into solidity as corn is shaken down in the measure.  We were heaped up in our own opinion, and sometimes running over in expressions of it.  This rude jostling is showing us the difference between bulk and weight, space and substance.

In one point of view we have a right to be proud of our inexperience, and hardly need to blush for our shortcomings.  These are the tributes we are paying to our own past innocence and tranquillity.  We have lived a peaceful life so long that the traditional cunning and cruelty of a state of warfare have become almost obsolete among us.  No wonder that hard men, bred in foreign camps, find us too good-natured, wanting in hatred towards our enemies.  We can readily believe that it is a special Providence which has suffered us to meet with a reverse or two, just enough to sting, without crippling us, only to wake up the slumbering passion which is the legitimate and chosen instrument of the higher powers for working out the ends of justice and the good of man.

There are a few far-seeing persons to whom our present sudden mighty conflict may not have come as a surprise; but to all except these it is a prodigy as startling as it would be, if the farmers of the North should find a ripened harvest of blood-red ears of maize upon the succulent stalks of midsummer.  We have lived for peace:  as individuals, to get food, comfort, luxuries for ourselves and others; as communities, to insure the best conditions we could for each human being, so that he might become what God meant him to be.  The verdict of the world was, that we were succeeding.  Many came to us from the old civilizations; few went away from us, and most of these such as we could spare without public loss.