In the beauty of the lily 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;
As we go marching on.
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of republicanism in Spain and in Europe generally.
Both were right from their respective standpoints.
At the beginning of the war he was sixty years of age,--too old to take an active part in it. This cannot be doubted, however, that if he had been thirty years younger he would either have won distinction as a commander or have fallen on the field of honor.
The best contribution from the Howe family to the war was Julia Ward Howe's “Battle hymn of the Republic.”
The war was a grand moral struggle, a conflict of historical forces; and neither Lowell, Emerson, nor Whittier expressed this so fully and with such depth of feeling as Mrs. Howe.
There are occasions when woman rises superior to man, and this was one of them.
It was evidently inspired by the John Brown song, that simple martial melody; but it rises above the personal and temporal into the universal and eternal.
Its measure has the swing of the Greek tragic chorus, extended to embrace the wider scope of Christian faith, and its diction is of an equally classic purity and vigor.
The last stanza runs:
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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