| By Sister Anthony of the Sacred Heart Quinlan
College of Notre Dame, San Jose, 1909
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
A Hundreds Years! A Hundred Years!
With all their freight of joys and fears,
Life's sudden laughter, swift-sprung tears,
Have fallen 'neath Time's glancing shears;
The Infant Nation skyward rears,
Proud mid the proudest of her peers,
A nurse of giant pioneers;
Mother of sons that rule a world,
From where Dawn's banners, dew-impearled,
To paling star-lamps are unfurled,
To where, on purpling vesper-main,
The star-browed Night holds silent reign,
Out, out, beyond on Ocean's plain,
Where East and West are one again,
She rules a Queen, her mandates sent
From Occident to Orient.
Within her Standard's Colors blent
The gold of Day, the blue of Even;
Her Flag, a fragment of God's Heaven,
"By angel hands to mortals given"
And, as yon glittering world-orbs run
Changeless about their central sun,
Her constellations move as one.
She rules, a Queen, from Sea to Sea,
And every man within her, FREE. Not always thus she held her throne,
For she has lain in anguish prone;
Has made to Heaven her widowed moan;
Has felt War's arrows in her breast,
Rent by the strife of East and West.
Red Ruin on her foot-prints pressed;
Disunion bayed her, fierce and wroth,
In angry heats of South and North,
Till burst the long-pent Furies forth,
Till smouldering embers leaped to flame,
And she were left without a Name,
To hide her dust-strewn head in shame,
Save that this Man, God-bidden, came. What marvel, then, that she reveres,--
As glancing back a hundred years,
She marks her thousand aching fears --
Him, whom to-day with grateful tears,
We honor, wisest of her seers,
The noblest of her Pioneers;
Who stands to-day, by Time confessed
Among the Greatest, Bravest, Best!
Incarnate Spirit of the West! With mother-instinct did she feel,
What Time's slow changes must reveal?
Some mystic power break its seal
And bare the tome's clasped secret? Say,
When, a century ago today,
The Child within his cradle lay,
Blind, dumb, and senseless? As the clay
Unfashioned yet, for hand and mind
To shape it to its theme and kind.
Did not her spirit thrill and start
To the faint pulsings of that heart,
As musing on her boundless dower,
That life, as frail as young field flower
Bruised by the late Spring's slivery shower,
She saw in prophecy this hour? What words have we to speak of him,
At whose mere name, the eyes grow dim?
His urn of glory to the rim
Is brimmed with pourings from the souls,
Of those whose lyre Thought controls;
And we, who only pipe and play
Like children on a holiday,
What can we do or think or say?
What yet is there unsung, unsaid,
In praise of our Immortal Dead? Kind Nature gave him of her best,
The strong, red life-blood of the West;
A Heritage of Toil, the test
Of Master-spirits, dower blest,
And God's Right Hand has done the rest.
His was no pride of birth and race,
His puny pomp of power, or place;
Nor Beauty of the form or face,
No aromatics of light grace
In chivalrics of golden lace;
Embodiment of that New Race,
He was a Soul and not a Face;
A MAN, was he and not a PLACE. His being was Life's noblest dower;
His was the Conqueror's patient power;
He stood a bulwark and a tower
Firm in the Nation's darkest hour;
Strong as the oak, sweet as a flower,
He watched the storm-clouds loom and lower;
Nay, bore a strife where bravest cower,--
The slanderer's poisoned adder-tongue --
And deep his sense-swift soul was stung,
Cruel, his simple heart was wrung.
None guessed the pain, none saw the tears,
And now, through vista-paths of years,
The glory of The Man appears,
When poisoned tongues, with his, are dust;
Dust are the hands that gave the thrust,
We can not see the blade for rust,
God's justice triumphs in the just. A Hundred Years! A Hundred Years!
Shout! Rend the skies with jubilant cheers!
Ring! Ring, the bells from every tower,
Thanksgiving for Our Nation Dower,
That Right has triumphed through the Years,
That Right has shown its deathless Power;
That God has saved the Nation's Flower,
Freedom and Union- boundless dower,
And God has triumphed in His just,
To Him we bow. In Him we Trust. |
