Hezekiah Butterworth

"The voice of the Russias has spoken; Each serf in the Russias is free! Ring, bells, on the Neva and Volga, Ring, bells, on the Caspian Sea!"

"Methinks when I stand in life's sunset, As I stood when we parted at school, I shall see the bright faces of children I loved in the village of Yule."

"Lovely land of Palestina! he thy shores will never see, But, his dream fulfilled, he follows Him who walked in Galilee."

"One taper lights a thousand, Yet shines as it has shone; And the humblest light may kindle A brighter than its own. Between a man of peace and war."

"Like an isle rose Monticello through the cooled and rippling trees, Like an isle in rippling starlight in the silence of the seas. Ceased the mocking-bird his singing; said the slaves with faltering breath, "'Tis the Third, and on the morrow Heaven will send the Angel Death.""

"In the past his soul is living as in fifty years ago, Hastes again to Philadelphia, hears again the Schuylkill flow — Meets again the elder Adams — knowing not that far away He is waiting for Death's morrow, on old Massachusetts Bay; Meets with Hancock, young and courtly, meets with Hopkins, bent and old, Meets again calm Roger Sherman, fiery Lee, and Carroll bold, Meets the sturdy form of Franklin, meets the half a hundred men Who have made themselves immortal, — breathes the ancient morn again."

"Reads again the words puissant, "All men are created free," Claims again for man his birthright, claims the world's equality."

"The war's red flames, Charging Tarleton, proud Cornwallis, navies moving on the James."

"Evening in majestic shadows fell upon the fortress' walls: Sweetly were the last bells ringing on the James and on the Charles. 'Mid the choruses of freedom two departed victors lay, One beside the blue Rivanna, one by Massachusetts Bay. He was gone, and night her sable curtain drew across the sky; Gone his soul into all nations, gone to live and not to die."

""An empire to be lost or won!" And who four thousand miles will ride And climb to heaven the Great Divide, And find the way to Washington, Through mountain cañons, winter snows, O'er streams where free the north wind blows, Who, who will ride from Walla-Walla, Four thousand miles, for Oregon?"

"It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain."

"I healed the wound, and each morning It sang its old sweet strain, But the bird with the broken pinion Never soars so high again."