USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Petersham > One hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Petersham, Massachusetts, Wednesday, August the tenth, 1754-1904 > Part 4
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Correspondence, owner of the largest and most productive farm in town, now the property of Franklin Haven, of Bos- ton, and his brother, Captain Asa, of whom is told the story that, late in life, one day in haying, on the approach of a shower, he undertook alone to place all the hay two men could pitch upon his cart, and finding the task too much for him, slid down onto the back of one of his oxen and thence to the ground, and when asked why he came down, said, "For more hay;" the Bryants, for many years and still in responsible official service of the town; Doctor Parkhurst, our president here a half-century ago, an able physician and prominent citizen of dignified and courtly bearing. How well some of us remember his hospitable home and his attractive family, his old gig and saddle-bags and the smell and taste of his pills and powders!
There were dear Old Sampson Wetherell, our worthy cit- izen and kindly neighbor and friend, who was so long store- keeper and postmaster that he seemed a sort of perennial Santa Claus, creating and dispensing the blessings of his candy-counter and the mails; Isaac Ayers, the smell and taste of whose big sweet apples was one of our autumnal an- ticipations; the Towers, farmers, teachers, a preacher, a mer- chant, a banker, councillor and member of the Governor's Staff; the Willsons, ever active and generous benefactors of the town; the Lincolns, the Spooners, the Hildreths, the Weeds, the Rosses, the Stones, the Fosters, the Hapgoods, the Whites, the Wilders, the Houghtons, the Williamses, the Wadsworths, the McCartys, the Clarks, the Reeds, the God- dards, the Bosworths, the Peckhams, the Cooks,- yes, even the Brooks, if you were not already inundated by their over- flow.
To most of you these are but empty names. I call them for the few of us for whom they repeople farmhouse, town house, meeting-house, and schoolhouse, reopen hospitable doors, rekindle the warmth and glow of old hearthstones, and restore, for the moment, the light of departed days, and
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of the eyes that made them memorable. Hail to them all, and farewell!
I shall pronounce but two more names, -those of John Fiske and his son Ralph, both at rest in the old churchyard yonder.
If Dr. Fiske had lived until now, we should have had the privilege of listening to him here to-day. This was not to be. Gifted as not many men have been, rich in knowledge that could not be transmitted, master of an art that he could not bequeath, at the zenith of his great power, anticipating the performance of the best work of his life, and on the eve of crossing the Atlantic to address the English people, at their request, on the one-thousandth anniversary of the death of King Alfred, he crossed his threshold for a breath of sea air and, in a few hours, on July 4, 1901, had crossed the threshold of death.
I refer to him not because of the great man he was, or of the monumental work he did, but for his association with our little town.
From the day of his first coming here, between forty and fifty years ago, to the end of his life he loved these hills as he loved no other spot on earth. From whatever beautiful place, on either side of the Atlantic, his letters afterwards came, it was always to say that this remained to him the most beau- tiful of all. He called it his native place, explaining that here he was born again. He said that if his work had not required him to be near the great libraries of Cambridge and Boston, he should have here spent the greater part of his time. Of death he used to say it had no terrors, for it simply meant going to Petersham to stay.
Of all his works, none have been more widely read and translated than his four little volumes upon religious sub- jects, grateful appreciation of which came to him from many sources and all denominations, even ministers saying they had been to them the salvation of their faith.
Two of these, "The Destiny of Man" and "The Idea of God," were written and dedicated, respectively, to his wife
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and children, in the old Brooks homestead in Petersham, and the latter was first read to a group of friends under the shade of its old maples.
These little volumes merit a word beyond the mere men- tion of their place of birth, for they deal with things of local, because of universal, interest. "The Idea of God" and "The Destiny of Man" awaken the first questionings of child- hood and affect the tranquillity of age. They are part of the history of Petersham because they are the germ of all history and of all biography, inspiring the aspirations of the saint and the forebodings of the sinner. They have slowly evolved the all-embracing conception of the one fatherhood of God and the one brotherhood of man. They determine. for the ploughman in his furrow, for the smith at his forge, for the statesman in the halls of legislation, and for the judge upon the bench, as well as for the minister at the altar, what he is and what he does, and shape for him his ideal of what all men ought to be and do.
For any help these two little volumes of Mr. Fiske have afforded the living and may afford the yet unborn, we of Pe- tersham may be glad to remember that here they were writ- ten and that here their writer rests.
His love of our town has descended to his children and his children's children. What it was to his son Ralph is happily® said in lines on Petersham found among his manuscripts after his too early death, and published later in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1899-lines which, I am sure, will touch in some heart-strings here such sympathetic chord as will justify my closing by reading them :
PETERSHAM.
Here, where the peace of the Creator lies, Far from the busy mart's incessant hum, Where mountains in their lonely grandeur rise, Waiting unmoved the ages yet to come,
Thou dwellest under broad and tranquil skies, A green oasis with unfailing springs,
The undisturbed home of restful things.
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Here, with the morn, when day is blithely breaking, And from the East a hemisphere of light Rolls westward o'er a world refreshed, awaking From the embrace of slumber and of night, Sweet comes the bonny bluebird's joyous greeting, While strutting Chanticleer, with tuneful throat, Heralds the day in shrill, exultant note.
At sunset through thy woods I take my way, Threading the mazy walks and avenues,. While from the crimson west some lingering ray Falls on my path, and Memory's shrine endues With dreamy incense of a bygone day, And in the thronging multitude of sylvan voices Sweet summer music tells us how the wood rejoices.
Ah! can this be the Paradise ? or yet Bright El Dorado, or Arcadia, where Glad fairies revel when the sun hath set, And songs of birds forever fill the air? Where nymph or dryad, with soft eyes of jet, Lures the late wanderer to his final rest, And charms his life out on her faithless breast ?
O thou most dear and venerated. spot, I love thee for that thou art still as when In happy hours - unclouded then my lot -- I lay within thy fern-enshrouded glen And felt thy loving presence. Not again With prayers or tears may vanished hours be bought. So be it, then, and here on thy green breast, When life is done, grant me a spot to rest.
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POEM BY FRANCIS Z. STONE:
T HE lips are dumb that should have sung to-day, And where he lies the lights and shadows play, Wreathing about the stone which bears his verse The golden semblance of a crown of bay.
His tribute to the soil perchance is heard In whispering wind, or pipe of wandering bird,- What measured syllables can I rehearse As eloquent as his unspoken word ?
We are not here, I think, to celebrate The landscape that we love, but the estate They left in trust to us who founded it As on a rock to stand inviolate.
The past is dead ? Not so - the poet sings Of buried error; our achievement springs From those dim forms that in our background flit, Men intimate with elemental things.
Obscure they lie, cominingled with the soil; But this, at least, we know: they rest from toil, And on these generations they bestow Of their stern conquest all the battle-spoil.
They halted Time apace upon his track To load with what they had his haversack,- Ah! far above what cursing soldiers throw From shattered windows at a city's sack,
When women shriek, and ruined roof-trees blaze, And Slaughter stalks, red-armed, along the ways; - Theirs the sole salvage of the centuries lost, The wealth, world-dowering, of earnest days!
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Not wealth of finished work, but work begun, The larger concepts that men's lives outrun,
Pursuing which, all paths at last are crossed By utter dark dividing sun and sun.
They gave us of their best; the meaner dross They spent, and left us richer for the loss! The ripe fruit falls to earth when, over-blown, Dead leaves before the storm unheeded toss.
The faith that fronted forests, and perceived Beneath the tangled branches, myriad-leaved,
And crowning barren hill-tops, boulder-strown, The future's opulent harvest, safely sheaved:
That was, in truth, their faith, and not the grim Belief in warring fiend and cherubim,
Through which old fears were darkly symbolized In gloomy sermon and desponding hymn. .
That faith be ours. Long as that faith we keep Nor doubt nor vain regret shall vex their sleep, And be that heritage more dearly prized Than all the gems that star the nether deep!
They did their work, and neither more nor less The best may do along their track who press To that low inn wherein alike we lapse From fame, or infame, to forgetfulness.
Why fret and fritter o'er ephemeral things ? Endeavor such as theirs at evening brings No lengthening shadow of a black Perhaps, -- Secure they sought their rest as guarded kings.
Their lives were narrow ? Well, it may be so - Not where the waters spread in overflow,
But where, constrained to deeper ways they run, Is gathered power to turn the wheels below.
With rugged sense they met each exigence Of changing times, and proved their competence
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Alike behind the ploughshare and the gun To plant the land, and stand the land's defence.
Schooled in the statecraft of a town's affairs, A civic conscience unobscured was theirs,
Knowing no middle ground 'twixt right and wrong, Their ballots not less earnest than their prayers,
Clear-eyed through all the fog of party strife, Undeafened by the clamorous voices rife
With menace and petition, they made strong Their arms to combat for the nation's life.
They looked beyond the moment, and they saw Across red, trampled fields of blazing war,
Peace rise with brow serene to bless the land Beneath the sway of Industry and Law.
Not that they fought; - no people sinks so low But on occasion they may strike a blow And fall, if need be, broken sword in hand, In the forefront of the embattled foe.
Not that they fought, the miracle, but why! These were no men whose passions, burning high, Burst rocket-like in flame, nor were impelled By martial pride to don War's panoply.
Inherent in the old Teutonic stock . Is valor stubborn-grained as native rock, ---- Their own the prescience which afar beheld A birth whose throes were merged in battle shock!
When vaunted statesmanship was shown inept, When captains on their posts inglorious slept, ... Here, where a rugged soil reared rugged men, The covenant of 'seventy-six was kept.
Long as their sepulchre remains a shrine, What need have we, or they, to seek a sign ? But when we turn away, apostate, then Give back their outworn seed-fields to the pine.
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To-day the need is ours, with reverent tread To pilgrim thither with uncovered head, And heeding portents of impending change, Hold counsel with the spirit of the dead.
Ah, friends, these innovations which we boast Were old when the Red Sea drowned Pharaoh's host, And tricked in garments modernized and strange Our progress is arrested by a ghost!
Not ours, but theirs, initiative to build On larger lines, albeit with hands less skilled, The state of which men dreamed in ancient Greece Wherein man's destiny should be fulfilled.
They wrought our heritage from steel and oak, Seeing its shape through storm and battle-smoke, -. With sword and axe and trowel, in war and peace, This edifice was reared, stern stroke on stroke.
Not census-sheets or tax-rolls make a state, Helvetia is not less poor than great. . The spirit and purpose of the citizen,-
These are the nation's arbiters of fate!
Not armies, nor leviathans that ride Caparisoned in steel upon the tide, Nor tribute wrung from injured, sullen men, Are pledges that our strength will still abide;
When Wealth defiles the sanctity of law, When demagogues incite to civil war, When legislation grows an auction mart, And thirty pieces make the senator!
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, Whence cometh help." The psalmist's harp-string thrills, The clouds of doubt diminish and depart, And golden sunshine all the landscape fills.
Back to your tents, O Israel! What avail Egyptian flesh-pots, and the weary tale
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Of strawless brick,- the inutilities Which have no weight in God's eternal scale ?
This is your birthright still; no claimant bars Your full possession, or your title mars; Turn from the multitude's futilities That transient are as gnats beneath the stars!
A little while, and what will matter then The gross activities of froward men, Who pyramid their perishable spoil And are, at once, as they had never been ?
Here, on the hills, are permanence and peace, And neighborhood, and sanctified increase, --- Immutabilities of sun and soil
For world-worn seekers of the golden fleece.
Here, on the heights, an incense fresh ascends From nature's altar, where the sweet-fern bends;
Clean winds sweep large horizons, and the blue With the world's outer rampart softly blends;
This watch-tower of the faith, set on a hill, Has yet, perchance, a purpose to fulfil -
As when, of old, men looked to it, and knew New England kept the nation's conscience still.
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ADDRESS BY MR. ABIATHAR BLANCHARD, A NATIVE OF PETERSHAM:
Y OU will permit me to express my pleasure in being present on this occasion, commemorative of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of my native town. I am glad to be here, and, in saying so, I surely voice the feeling of the inhabitants of Petersham, as well as of others who, either once identified with the town or tracing their ancestry here, have returned to join in this celebration.
We have always heard a good deal about patriotism. Some- times we may have heard too much, especially when that quality has been exalted above the moral law, though I would be the last to decry a cardinal civic virtue. But there is a sen- timent, of the very essence of patriotism, of which there is little danger that we shall have too much. Rather is the tend- ency in these days the other way. The object of this sen- timent is not the nation, or the state, but the town in which we live. Here is our home, with its family ties. Here are our neighbors and immediate circle of friends. Here are the lo- cal institutions, municipal, educational, and religious, that. come close to our every-day and even our inmost life. Thus one town takes precedence of all others. It appeals directly and continually to our public spirit. Its well-being we cher- ish. To its honor and reputation we are almost as sensitive as to our own. The law allows to each citizen one domicile, but there are many of us who owe a sort of divided allegiance. There is the town of our nativity and the town of our adop- tion. There is the home where we were born and nurtured and the home that we established for ourselves in later life. However much the latter may command our duty and engross
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our thought, there is that in the former which will never suf- fer it to be forgotten. Of the strength of that primal allegiance the gathering to-day is a witness.
Old Petersham, enthroned on her picturesque hills in the heart of our beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts! "Here where the peace of the Creator lies"! Beautiful in her natural aspect, with a "charm of landscape and of sky" of which even the stranger owns the spell! What, then, does it mean to us who first opened our eyes upon these scenes, pass- ing here the impressionable years of childhood and growing up to manhood and womanhood ? What fairer setting could we wish for the annals and traditions of our ancestors ? It was a profound truth uttered by the old classic, Humani nihil alienum (nothing is foreign to me). It is humanity that interests us, and it is the human element that to us invests these familar scenes with an especial attraction and signifi- cance.
The real Petersham is to be found in people we have known here, those whom we are glad to greet on this occasion, others absent in body but present in spirit, and the " cloud of wit- nesses" whom memory summons from the past. They are the ones who have consecrated this soil and made it the lode- stone that brings to it to-day our willing feet.
I have made an allusion to patriotism. It was here fifty years ago that I received my first impression of the American flag. In anticipation of the one-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, a "liberty-pole" had been erected on Petersham Common. On this the banner of the republic was raised and its streaming folds flung to the free air of heaven. An impressive sight under any conditions! To my child's vision that flag was "like a meteor in the sky," and the impression made by that first flag-raising stands out unique from all others, vivid and undimmed by the years.
But we have made history since that natal day. Seven years later there was another display of the flag on Peters- ham streets-not one flag, but many. I recall a Sabbath morning in May, 1861. Before each house and strung across
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the street were flags in every variety. The spectacle meant something, for in those early days of the War of the Rebel- lion the inquiry went around whether this man, that, or the other was loyal to the Union. To this inquiry the display of the flag was deemed a sufficient answer, and such it proved in the event. Through the four years of that terrible war Petersham, in common with her sister towns, stood staunch and loyal, and we to-day are proud of her record. Of what that conflict meant to this town the Memorial Building that fronts the village green will tell something to coming gener- ations. The same service will be performed by memorial addresses and records of various kinds, but the personal note evoked at the time by the events themselves can never be en- tirely reproduced. The way to learn history is to live when it is being made. That is the task the real historian sets for himself. Those of us who were old enough to "take in" the events of the Civil War learned its history to some purpose. In that momentous era we could say, with deep feeling of its truth,
"We are living, we are living In a grand and awful time, In an age on ages telling; To be living is sublime."
Lowell says in one of his addresses, " It was a benediction to have lived in the same age with Abraham Lincoln." So much may be said, and more. It was also a benediction and an inspiration to have known personally so many of the men who, sacrificing their business interests and personal com- fort, and severing the dearest ties, risked their lives for their country. In a small town like Petersham it was not possible to raise whole companies, and so these men, enlisting at dif- ferent times, were to be found in different commands and in all branches of the service. All honor to them, wherever they were! Their names recur to me as I speak, as they will : to many in this audience. They can never be forgotten. It is with no invidious distinction, then, that I mention partic-
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ularly the company of men who went from this town and Barre, enlisting in the summer of 1862. This was the dark- est period of the war. McClellan had been baffled before Richmond, our armies had suffered defeat in the battles be- fore the national capitol, and the rebels later crossed the Po- tomoc into Maryland. It was at this stage of the war that : Company F of the Fifty-third Regiment was recruited. It was no holiday pastime for which these men enlisted, but the grim business of war. As I look upon the little band of sur- vivors to-day I think of Webster's apostrophe to the survi- ving soldiers of the Revolution, for I see before me men equally worthy of honor. There is a pleasure mingled with sadness as I look into your faces. Other faces as familiar as yours come before me, the beloved comrades who marched and battled and some of whom fell by your side, and in the van your gallant commander, that irreproachable gentleman, our Bayard, that prince among men, Captain Mudge.
But what of the future ? However " secure the past" may be, time does not stop in his course. There is a future of some kind for our ancestral town. A contrary supposition would throw a pall over the present exercises. What shall that future bring ?
There are some things we would fain hope for in the Pe- tersham that is to be. One is that she may take up into her municipal, social, and religious life much of the spirit of the past; that some scions of the old stock may continue to live here and influence her destinies. That great changes are go- ing on in the lineage of the people who live here is not to be doubted. We are also painfully aware that in recent years there have been many signs of a decaying prosperity. From a certain point of vantage the other day I marked eight abandoned farms. Those hearthstones have grown cold, and the houses that in my easy recollection were centres of life are either falling to ruin or have entirely disappeared. I. look for a turn in the tide, to a time when it will be profitable to farm here in the hill towns of New England, when these abandoned acres will be reclaimed and new and better houses
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rise in the place of the old. Economic changes are taking place in that direction, and people of a different ancestry from ours are finding it out. These people have in them the making of good citizens, and everything should be done to make them good citizens.
The spirit of old Petersham, the spirit of this occasion, should be projected into the future. What is the mission of your public library, with its treasures of literature and other means of ministration to the higher life of the community? What is the mission of the three churches that have stood here for so long? May they still continue to "point their spires of faith to heaven;" for there is work enough for them and similar organizations to do, a work that cannot be left unperformed without peril to the town and to the State. Again, there is the school. Had I the time I would stop to eulogize the traditional and actual little red schoolhouse of my recol- lection, and the many superior teachers who have held sway in those humble institutions. How much we owe to them! But in my vision of the future, and in accord with the spirit of the age, I see not many little schoolhouses scattered over the landscape, but a large, thoroughly appointed central building with a trained corps of instructors putting into practice the most approved ideas in education. But the work should not stop with the ordinary English branches. There should be the fullest opportunity for high-school stud- ies that fit for life, and also, for those who desire it, a prepa- ration for the great colleges and universities of the country. I am sure that there are many here who can remember the larger vision and opportunity that came to them when Prin- ciples Sprague, Dudley, Peabody, and Leonard, with able assistants, conducted in successive years the Petersham Clas- sical High School; others will recall with similar feelings an institution of larger scope, the Highland Institute, with its corps of accomplished teachers, which flourished here for several years. Let the young people, our successors here, have better advantages still; for the world moves on. It is for their good and the good of the town. The declared pol-
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icy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is to give every child within its borders a chance for an education, including the higher education. This policy of the State should be met by the towns much more than half way, for upon its universal prevalence depend not only the highest welfare of the towns themselves, but also the stability of the commonwealth and the great republic.
Our friendly forecast, then, for the ancestral town whose anniversary we commemorate to-day would place her well within the scope and tendency of the highest civilization, within easy reach of the best things of life, to which, in the future as in the past, she should make no unworthy contri- bution.
POEM BY REV. MR. TOWER, ALSO A NATIVE OF THE TOWN:
W HAT 'S hallowed ground ?" the poet asks, And answers as he may,
In words of glowing eloquence, As is the poet's way. But Nature speaks in louder tones, Prosaic though they be,
And cries, "The spot where life was young Is hallowed ground to me."
And so from distant haunts of men, Where'er their dwellings be,
Thy sons and daughters, Petersham, With fond hearts turn to thee.
They view thee with enchanted eye; To their anointed gaze
A light falls on thee from a sky Unseen since childhood days.
To them (although it be not theirs A reason to assign) No suns so bright, no fields so green, No skies so blue, as thine!
No zephyrs soft as those that stir Thy woods as day declines;
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No music like thy tinkling brooks Or like thy murmuring pines!
What pictures from the vanished years Through memory's chambers throng! The swallow twittering from the eaves, The bluebird's early song! The squirrel chattering in the elm, The hawk's shriek from the sky, The lonely notes of whippoorwill, The quail's foreboding cry, The woodbird's weird but tuneful song Deep in the everglade, Heard oftenest as the night drew on With ever deepening shade;
The wondrous sound by day or night Of wild fowl on the wing, Unresting in their Northern flight, The harbingers of spring; The copse with wild fruits freighted rare On vine and bush and ground; - No fairer sight to childhood's eye Can through the earth be found!
And e'en the man whose travelled eye Has glanced o'er many lands, Whose feet have trod the mountain-tops Or crossed the desert sands, But stands at length upon these heights And views the prospect round From where the central hamlet stands To yon horizon's bound, And sees thy meads, thy clustered hills, Thy vales and woods between, To where Wachusett lifts his head Above his pastures green; To where Monadnock rears his bulk . Up toward the Northern star; To where New Salem's distant spires Gleam in the west afar;
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To where bold Hoosac towers aloft Full sixty miles away And marshals all his vassal peaks In one sublime array; Where sun-lit clouds in circling groups On misty slopes are driven, And tier on tier the ranges rise Like giant steps to heaven. Who views this scene when morning dews Flash rainbows in the sun, Or when the western mountains blaze Before the day is done; Who views it clothed in summer's sheen, A glory dazzling sight, Or wrapt in winter's spotless robe, A glory scarce less bright; Can never say, with soul unstained, That Beauty dwells not here As surely as on Alpine height Or Scotia's storied mere! In Nature's temple he who bends With reverence sincere Seeks vainly a more sacred shrine Than that awaits him here; For Nature here with lavish hand Has all her arts combined To fire the fancy, thrill the soul, And captivate the mind.
But other scenes from memory's store Arise upon my view, Which stir the inmost, deepest thought As not e'en these can do. I see no stately mansions rise To line the lengthening street Whose costly pavements, night and day, Are beat by hurrying feet; I see no mammoth marts of trade; I hear no engines roar
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Amid the din of crowded shops Whence streams of wealth outpour; I see no lordly palaces, No tall cathedral spires, No gay-decked throng on pleasure bent With all that heart desires; As memory's magic hand unrolls The scroll of bygone years A sight of deeper meaning far To my tranced eye appears. I see the source, the primal source, Whence all those splendors come; I see the Nation's final hope, I see the COUNTRY HOME. A Home indeed! Not a mere lodge To pass the night away, While the heart's interest wanders far In other scenes to stray; But Home, the center of the soul, An anchor and a stay, A source of strength that shall not fail To life's remotest day.
What though the stern demands of toil Fill full the fleeting hours, And tasks by stubborn nature set Tax all the vital powers ? Those powers expand and stronger grow "The strenuous life" to try; No toil so good for brawn and brain . As neath the open sky. Swift speeds the blood through healthy veins; And with their minds aglow, The toilers, seeking honest gains, In virtue also grow. And thus the hand that held the plow And drew the furrow straight Prevails to carve a fortune out When come to man's estate.
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And so thy children, Petersham, Have made thy merit known In circles wide, both near and far, As passing years have flown. With courage high they have gone forth In all the walks of life, And in the world's broad battlefield Proved victors in the strife. The marts of commerce and of trade Have claimed full many a son, And large successes oft have told Of service ably done. In arts mechanic some have thrived, With skillful hand and brain;
And some aspiring have not failed Th' inventor's meed to gain. The teacher's high vocation some Have plied, and plied it well, And blessings rich have spread abroad, Far more than words can tell.
The bar and public halls of state Have fitly claimed a share, Nor lacked the praise of duty done, And reputation fair.
And some by lofty purpose moved The sacred desk have filled,
And with the oracles of Heaven The listening people thrilled; Premising it were joy supreme To do the works of love
And leave all questions of award To be adjudged above. And some by patriot ardor fired To save the nation's life
Exchanged the quiet joys of home For scenes of bloody strife. On distant fields, neath Southern skies, Where issues vast were tried, 'Mid rifle-shot and cannon's roar They nobly fought and died.
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Here halts our verse; nor tongue nor pen Nor thought can farther go! What is the object, what the end Of all things here below ? What save that men upright and true, Such as were first designed,
Should rise in manhood's glorious strength And live to bless mankind ? Such have been here; as freshening streams From fountains in the hill Flow down till verdure, growth, and bloom The vales and meadows fill; So from thy dwellings, Petersham, These streams of life have flowed
To which, with others like them, all Our nation boasts is owed. In all the wealth, prosperity, And greatness which combine To raise our land all lands above, A generous share is thine. Long be it so! and never may Thy children love thee less!
And may the Author of all good Thy hills and valleys bless!
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