reedom's foundation,
Columbia, rode safe thro' the storm;
With her garlands of vict'ry around her,
When so proudly she bore her brave crew,
With her flag proudly floating before her,
The boast of the red, white and blue.
CHORUS.
3. The wine-cup, the wine-cup bring hither,
And fill you it true to the brim;
May the wreaths they have won never wither,
Nor the star of their glory grow dim.
May the service united ne'er sever,
But they to their colors prove true.
The Army and Navy forever,
Three cheers for the red, white and blue.
CHORUS.
_David T. Shaw_.
LESSON LXII
LOVE FOR THE DEAD
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be
divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal--every other affliction to
forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open--this
affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother
who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from
her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that
would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember
be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the
friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon
the remains of her he most loved--when he feels his heart, as it were,
crushed in the closing of its portal--would accept of consolation that
must be bought by forgetfulness?
No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes
of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and
when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of
recollection--when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the
present ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive
meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness--who would
root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a
passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper
sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it, even for the
song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from
the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to
which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the
grave! It buries every error--covers every defect. From its peaceful
bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can
look down up
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