C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Author Unknown
Song of the Forge
C
Clang, clang! a hundred hammers swing;
Like the thunder-rattle of a tropic sky
The mighty blows still multiply:
Clang, clang!
Say, brothers of the dusky brow,
What are your strong arms forging now?—
The colter of the kindly plow:
Sweet Mary, mother, bless our toil;
May its broad furrow still unbind
To genial rains, to sun and wind,
The most benignant soil.
On many a sweet and sheltered lea,
By many a streamlet’s silver tide,
Amidst the song of the morning birds,
Amidst the low of the sauntering herds,
Amidst soft breezes which do stray
Through woodbine hedges and sweet May
Along the green hill’s side.
With wide-spread glory clothes the land;
When to the valleys, from the brow
Of each resplendent slope is rolled
A ruddy sky of living gold,
We bless—we bless the plow.—
Beneath the hammer’s potent blows?—
Clink, clank—we forge the giant chain
Which bears the gallant vessel’s strain,
’Midst stormy winds and adverse tides;
Secured by this, the good ship braves
The rocky roadstead, and the waves
Which thunder on her sides.
The mist drive back before the breeze,
The storm-cloud on the hill;
Calmly he rests, though far away
In boisterous climes his vessel lay,
Reliant on our skill.—
Fathoms beneath the solemn deep:
By Afric’s pestilential shore,
By many an iceberg, lone and hoar,
By many a palmy western isle
Basking in spring’s perpetual smile,
By stormy Labrador?
When to the battery’s deadly peal
The crushing broadside makes reply?
Or else, as at the glorious Nile,
Hold grappling ships, that strive the while
For death or victory?
Dark brothers of the forge, beneath
The iron tempest of your blows,
The furnace’s red breath?—
And brilliant, of bright sparks, is poured
Around and up in the dusky air,
As our hammers forge the sword.
Upon the freeman’s thigh ’tis bound,
While for his altar and his hearth,
While for the land that gave him birth,
The war-drums roll, the trumpets sound—
How sacred is it then!
It flashes in the van of fight,—
Whether in some wild mountain pass,
As that where fell Leonidas;
Or on some sterile plain and stern,
A Marston or a Bannockburn;
Or, mid fierce crags and bursting rills,
The Switzer’s Alps and Tyrol’s hills;
Or as, when sank the Armada’s pride,
It gleams above the stormy tide,—
Still, still, whene’er the battle word
Is liberty,—when men do stand
For justice and their native land,—
Then Heaven bless the sword.