That for her children as a man defies,
And to her children as a mother gives,―
Take our fresh fealty now!

No more a Chieftainess, with wampum-zone
And feather-cinctured brow,-

No more a new Britannia, grown

To spread an equal banner to the breeze,
And lift thy trident o'er the double seas;
But with unborrowed crest,

In thine own native beauty dressed,

The front of pure command, the unflinching eye, thine own!

III.-3.

Look up, look forth, and on!

There's light in the dawning sky: The clouds are parting, the night is gone: Prepare for the work of the day! Fallow thy pastures lie

And far thy shepherds stray, And the fields of thy vast domain Are waiting for purer seed

Of knowledge, desire, and deed,
For keener sunshine and mellower rain!
But keep thy garments pure:

Pluck them back, with the old disdain,
From touch of the hands that stain!
So shall thy strength endure.
Transmute into good the gold of Gain,
Compel to beauty thy ruder powers,

Till the bounty of coming hours
Shall plant, on thy fields apart,
With the oak of Toil, the rose of Art!
Be watchful, and keep us so:
Be strong, and fear no foe:

Be just, and the world shall know!
With the same love, love us, as we give;

And the day shall never come,
That finds us weak or dumb
To join and smite and cry

In the great task, for thee to die,

And the greater task, for thee to live!

OUR NATIONAL BANNER.

"A GRAND TRIUMPHAL MARCH."

BY DEXTER SMITH,

RENDERED AT PHILADELPHIA JULY, 4, 1876.

I.

O'er the high and o'er the lowly
Floats that banner bright and holy
In the rays of freedom's sun;
In the nation's heart imbedded,
O'er our Union newly wedded,
One in all; and all in one.

II.

Let the banner wave forever.
May its lustrous stars fade never,

Till the stars shall pale on high;
While there's right the wrong defeating,
While there's hope in true heart beating,
Truth and freedom shall not die.

III.

As it floated long before us,

Be it ever floating o'er us,

O'er our land from shore to shore;

There are freemen yet to wave it,
Millions who would die to save it,—

Wave it, save it evermore.

WHAT THE AGE OWES TO AMERICA.

AN ORATION DELIVERED BY WILLIAM M. EVARTS, AT PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4TH, 1876.

I.

THE event which to-day we commemorate supplies its own reflections and enthusiasms and brings its own plaudits. They do not at all hang on the voice of the speaker, nor do they greatly depend upon the contacts and associations of the place. The Declaration of American Independence was, when it occurred, a capital transaction in human affairs; as such it has kept its place in history; as such it will maintain itself while human interest in human institutions shall endure. The scene and the actors, for their profound impression upon the world, at the time and ever since, have owed nothing to dramatic effects, nothing to epical exaggerations. To the eye there was nothing wonderful, or vast, or splendid, or pathetic in the movement or the display. Imagination or art can give no sensible grace or decoration to the persons, the place, or the performance, which made up the business of that day. The worth and force that belong to the agents and the action rest wholly on the wisdom, the courage, and the faith that formed and executed the great design, and the potency and permanence of its operation upon the affairs of the world which, as foreseen and legitimate consequences, followed. The dignity of the act is the deliberate, circumspect, open, and serene performance by these men in the clear light of day, and by a concurrent purpose of a civic duty, which embraced the greatest hazards to themselves and to all the people from whom they held this deputed discretion, but which, to their sober judgments, promised benefits to that people and their posterity, from generation to generation, exceeding these hazards and commensurate with its own fitness. The question of their conduct is to be measured by the actual weight and pressure of the manifold considerations which surrounded the subject before them, and by the abundant evidence that they comprehended their vastness and variety. By a voluntary and responsible choice they willed to do what was done and what,

without their will, would not have been done. Thus estimated, the illustrious act covers all who participated in it with its own renown, and makes them forever conspicuous among men, as it is forever famous among events. And thus the signers of the Declaration of our Independence "wrote their names where all nations should behold them, and all time should not efface them." It was, "in the course of human events," intrusted to them to determine whether the fulness of time had come when a nation should be born in a day. They declared the independence of a new nation in the sense in which men declare emancipation or declare war; the declaration created what was declared.

Famous always, among men, are the founders of States, and fortunate above all others in such fame are these, our fathers, whose combined wisdom and courage began the great structure of our national existence, and laid sure the foundations of liberty and justice on which it rests. Fortunate, first, in the clearness of their title and in the world's acceptance of their rightful claim. Fortunate, next, in the enduring magnitude of the State they founded and the benificence of its protection of the vast interests of human life and happiness which have here had their home. Fortunate, again, in the admiring imitation of their work, which the institutions of the most powerful and most advanced nations more and more exhibit; and last of all, fortunate in the full demonstration of our later time that their work is adequate to withstand the most disastrous storms of human fortunes, and survive unwrecked, unshaken and unharmed.

This day has now been celebrated by a great people, at each recurrence of its anniversary, for a hundred years, with every form of ostentatious joy, with every demonstration of respect and gratitude for the ancestral virtue which gave it its glory, and with the firmest faith that growing time should neither obscure its lustre nor reduce the ardor or discredit the sincerity of its observance. A reverent spirit has explored the lives of the men who took part in the great transaction; has unfolded their characters and exhibited to an admiring posterity the purity of their motives; the sagacity, the bravery, the fortitude, the perseverance which marked their conduct, and which secured the prosperity and permanence of their work.