Over Here

Excerpt

Pledged to the bravest and the best,We stand, who cannot share the fray,Staunch for the danger and the test.For them at night we kneel and pray.Be with them, Lord, who serve the truth,And make us worthy of our youth!Here mother-love and father-loveUnite in love of country now;Here to the flag that flies above,Our heads we reverently bow;Here as one people, night and day,For victory we work and pray.Nor race nor creed shall difference make,Nor bigot mar the zealot's plan;We give our all for Freedom's sake,Each man a king, each king a man.Make us the equal, Lord, we prayOf them who die for truth to-day!Let us as gladly give our best,Let us as bravely pay the priceAs they, who in the bitter testMeet the supremest sacrifice.Oh, God! Wherever we are led,Let us be worthy of our dead!Let us not compromise the truth,Let us not cringe so much in fearThat foes may whisper to our youthThat we have failed in courage here.Lord, strengthen us, that they may knowOur spirits follow where they go!

This is the thing we fight:A cry of terror in the night;A ship on work of mercy bent—A carrier of the sick and maimed—Beneath the cruel waters sent,And those that did it, unashamed.A woman who had tried to fillA mother's place; had nursed the illAnd soothed the troubled brows of painAnd earned the dying's grateful prayers,Before a wall by soldiers slain!And such a poor pretext was theirs!Old women pierced by bayonets grimAnd babies slaughtered for a whim,Cathedrals made the sport of shells,No mercy, even for a child,As though the imps of all the hellsWere crazed with drink and running wild.All this we fight—that some day whenGood sense shall come again to men,Our children's children may not readThis age's history thus defamedAnd find we served a selfish creedAnd ever be of us ashamed!

God has been good to men. He gaveHis Only Son their souls to save,And then he made a second gift,Which from their dreary lives should liftThe tyrant's yoke and set them freeFrom all who'd throttle liberty.He gave America to men—Fashioned this land we love, and thenDeep in her forests sowed the seedWhich was to serve man's earthly need.When wisps of smoke first upwards curledFrom pilgrim fires, upon the worldUnnoticed and unseen, beganGod's second work of grace for man.Here where the savage roamed and fought,God sowed the seed of nobler thought;Here to the land we love to claim,The pioneers of freedom came;Here has been cradled all that's bestIn every human mind and breast.For full four hundred years and moreOur land has stretched her welcoming shoreTo weary feet from soils afar;Soul-shackled serfs of king and czarHave journeyed here and toiled and sungAnd talked of freedom to their young,And God above has smiled to seeThis precious work of liberty,And watched this second gift He gaveThe dreary lives of men to save.And now, when liberty's at bay,And blood-stained tyrants force the fray,Worn warriors, battling for the right,Crushed by oppression's cruel might,Hear in the dark through which they gropeAmerica's glad cry of hope:Man's liberty is not to die!America is standing by!World-wide shall human lives be free:America has crossed the sea!America! the land we love!God's second gift from Heaven above,Builded and fashioned out of truth,Sinewed by Him with splendid youthFor that glad day when shall be furledAll tyrant flags throughout the world.For this our banner holds the sky:That liberty shall never die.For this, America began:To make a brotherhood of man.

We have boasted our courage in moments of ease,Our star-spangled banner we've flung on the breeze;We have taught men to cheer for its beauty and worth,And have called it the flag of the bravest on earthNow the dark days are here, we must stand to the test.Oh, God! let us prove we are true to our best!We have drunk to our flag, and we've talked of the right,We have challenged oppression to show us its might;We have strutted for years through the world as a raceThat for God and for country, earth's tyrants would face;Now the gage is flung down, hate is loosed in the world....