| |
| O DESTINED Land, unto thy citadel, | |
| What founding fates even now doth peace compel, | |
| That through the world thy name is sweet to tell! | |
| O thronëd Freedom, unto thee is brought | |
| Empire; nor falsehood nor blood-payment asked; | 5 |
| Who never through deceit thy ends hast sought, | |
| Nor toiling millions for ambition tasked; | |
| Unlike the fools who build the throne | |
| On fraud, and wrong, and woe; | |
| For man at last will take his own, | 10 |
| Nor count the overthrow; | |
| But far from these is set thy continent, | |
| Nor fears the Revolution in man’s rise; | |
| On laws that with the weal of all consent, | |
| And saving truths that make the people wise: | 15 |
| For thou art founded in the eternal fact | |
| That every man doth greaten with the act | |
| Of freedom; and doth strengthen with the weight | |
| Of duty; and diviner moulds his fate, | |
| By sharp experience taught the thing he lacked, | 20 |
| God’s pupil; thy large maxim framed, though late, | |
| Who masters best himself best serves the State. | |
| This wisdom is thy Corner: next the stone | |
| Of Bounty; thou hast given all; thy store, | |
| Free as the air, and broadcast as the light, | 25 |
| Thou flingest; and the fair and gracious sight, | |
| More rich, doth teach thy sons this happy lore: | |
| That no man lives who takes not priceless gifts | |
| Both of thy substance and thy laws, whereto | |
| He may not plead desert, but holds of thee | 30 |
| A childhood title, shared with all who grew, | |
| His brethren of the hearth; whence no man lifts | |
| Above the common right his claim; nor dares | |
| To fence his pastures of the common good: | |
| For common are thy fields; common the toil; | 35 |
| Common the charter of prosperity, | |
| That gives to each that all may blessed be. | |
| This is the very counsel of thy soil. | |
| Therefore, if any thrive, mean-souled he spares | |
| The alms he took; let him not think subdued | 40 |
| The State’s first law, that civic rights are strong | |
| But while the fruits of all to all belong; | |
| Although he heir the fortune of the earth, | |
| Let him not hoard, nor spend it for his mirth, | |
| But match his private means with public worth. | 45 |
| That man in whom the people’s riches lie | |
| Is the great citizen, in his country’s eye. | |
| Justice, the third great base, that shall secure | |
| To each his earnings, howsoever poor, | |
| From each his duties, howsoever great. | 50 |
| She bids the future for the past atone. | |
| Behold her symbols on the hoary stone— | |
| The awful scales and that war-hammered beam | |
| Which whoso thinks to break doth fondly dream, | |
| Or Czars who tyrannize or mobs that rage; | 55 |
| These are her charge, and heaven’s eternal law. | |
| She from old fountains doth new judgment draw. | |
| Till, word by word, the ancient order swerves | |
| To the true course more nigh; in every age | |
| A little she creates, but more preserves. | 60 |
| Hope stands the last, a mighty prop of fate. | |
| These thy foundations are, O firm-set State! | |
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