Suggestive programs for special day exercises/Our Nations Birthday/America
AMERICA.
JOHN EARNEST M’CANN.
America! Mine!
Ay, comrades, and thine.
Thy very name ripples with music, and rolls
Like the oceans that surge 'twixt the mystical poles.
Land of great Boone,
Of Marion, Wayne;
Of Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, Blaine;
Of thousands that lived and died all too soon,
Who beat out broad paths for new feet to tread.
From the time when the first white man met the first red,
Down to Crockett’s and Bowie’s,—they of the band
Who for liberty died by the old Rio Grande!
The Alamo forget not, nor for what that band died,
While reason sits throned in its glorious pride.
And worship our Kearneys, our Grants, and the brave
Who enriched the old earth the old Union to save!
My dear native land!
I lift my right hand,
With my left on my heart and my eyes to the skies
And my soul on my tongue.
While I list to the breezes that, mayhap, have sung
Round the world since the dawn of creation tore the veil of the
long night apart, —
My very heart cries:
To be born in thee, be of thee, breathe thy sweet air,
To die in thee, rest in thee, under the glare
Of the sun and the moon and the stars and the folds
Of the stars and the bars of thy banner, which holds
Over all that which monarchs despise—
Liberty, brotherhood, union, and all;
Here on the sod.
Under night’s pall,
I cry out “Thank God!”
America! Mine!
Ay, any man’s—thine!
Thine from the jungle, from Africa’s plain.
From the knout, from the chain;
From the land where the mothers of conscripts’ tears flow
Like the rain,
When the flesh of their flesh and the bone of their bone march
away to fight, wound, and be slain;
From the fair land of Austria, Italy, Spain;
From Erin, whose woe
Fills the hearts of republics with horror and pain.
This land of the free is for thee!
Live in it, work in, love in, weep in it,
Laugh in it, sing in it, die in it, sleep in it!
For it’s free and for thee and for me;
The fairest
And rarest
That ever man trod,
The sweetest and dearest
’Twixt the sky and the sod;
And it’s mine,
And it’s thine,
Thank God!
(From Old Glory Speaker,—H. R. Pattengill, Publisher.)