Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and Thee.

This does not appear in the hymnals and owns no special tune. Its niche
of honor is in the temple of anthology, but it will always be called the
"Concord Hymn"--and the fourth line of its first stanza is a perennial
quotation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, LL.D., the renowned American essayist and poet, was
born in Boston, 1803. He graduated at Harvard in 1821, and was ordained
to the Unitarian ministry, but turned his attention to literature,
writing and lecturing on ethical and philosophical themes, and winning
universal fame by his original and suggestive prose and verse. He died
April 27, 1882.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

After a visit to the Federal camps on the Potomac in 1861, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe returned to her lodgings in Washington, fatigued, as she says,
by her "long, cold drive," and slept soundly. Awakening at early
daybreak, she began "to twine the long lines of a hymn which promised to
suit the measure of the 'John Brown' melody."

This hymn was written out after a fashion in the dark, by Mrs. Howe, and
she then went back to sleep.

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 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.

_THE TUNE._

The music of the old camp-meeting refrain,--

Say, brothers will you meet us?

--or,--

O brother, will you meet me,

(N