ALL THINGS ONCE ARE THINGS ALL things once are things for ever; Once betrayed from childly faith, JULIA WARD HOWE. BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. | As he died to make men holy, let us 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. die to make men free, While God is marching on! know'st our story, Know'st how we stole God's treasure from on high; Without heaven's virtue we had heaven's glory, I have read a fiery gospel, writ in bur- Too justly our delights were doomed nished 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, 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; to die. "Intense as were our blisses, e'en so painful The keen privation it was ours to share; All states, all places barren proved and baneful, Dead stones grew pitiful at our despair; "Till, to the cloister's solitude repairing, Our feet the way of holier sorrows trod, Hid from each other, yet together sharing The labor of the Providence of God She ranged my hair with gem or flower, Careful, the festal draperies hung, My highest joy she could not share, “And she shall live with me,” I said, Or else, methought, some farmer bold Should woo and win my gentle Lizzie, And I should stock her house fourfold, Be with her wedding blithely busy. But lo! Consumption's spectral form Sucks from her lips the flickering breath; In these pale flowers, these tear-drops (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, I would hold him long and painfully 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, |