Poets' Corner - Julia Ward Howe

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The Battle Hymn of the Republic

MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,: His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,: His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,: Since God is marching on!"
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat;
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant at my feet!: Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,: While God is marching on!; Julia Ward Howe

The Dead Christ

TAKE the dead Christ to my chamber,: The Christ I brought from Rome;
Over all the tossing ocean,: He has reached his western home;
Bear him as in procession,: And lay him solemnly
Where, through weary night and morning,: He shall bear me company.
The name I bear is other: Than that I bore by birth,
And I've given life to children: Who'll grow and dwell on earth;
But the time comes swiftly towards me: (Nor do I bid it stay),
When the dead Christ will be more to me: Than all I hold to-day.
Lay the dead Christ beside me,: Oh, press him on my heart,
I would hold him long and painfully: Till the weary tears should start;
Till the divine contagion: Heal me of self and sin,
And the cold weight press wholly down: The pulse that chokes within.
Reproof and frost, they fret me,: Towards the free, the sunny lands,
From the chaos of existence: I stretch these feeble hands;
And, penitential, kneeling,: Pray God would not be wroth,
Who gave not the strength of feeling,: And strength of labor both.
Thou'rt but a wooden carving,: Defaced of worms, and old;
Yet more to me thou couldst not be: Wert thou all wrapt in gold,
Like the gem-bedizened baby: Which, at the Twelth-day noon,
They show from the Ara Coeli's steps,: To a merry dancing tune.
I ask of thee no wonders,: No changing white or red;
I dream not thou art living,: I love and prize thee dead.
That salutary deadness: I seek, through want and pain,
From which God's own high power can bid: Our virtue rise again.; Julia Ward Howe

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