OGLETHORPE

As when with oldtime passion for this Land

Here once she stood, and in her pride, sent forth

Workmen on every hand,

Sowing the seed of knowledge South and North,

More gracious now than ever, let her rise,

The splendor of a new dawn in her eyes;

Grave, youngest sister of that company,

That smiling wear

Laurel and pine

And wild magnolias in their flowing hair;

The sisters Academe,

With thoughts divine,

Standing with eyes a-dream,

Gazing beyond the world, into the sea,

Where lie the Islands of Infinity.

Now in these stormy days of stress and strain,

When Gospel seems in vain,

And Christianity a dream we've lost,

That once we made our boast;

Now when all life is brought

Face to grim face with naught,

And a condition speaking, trumpet-lipped,

Of works material, leaving Beauty out

Of God's economy; while, horror-dipped,

Lies our buried faith, full near to perish,

‘ Mid the high things we cherish,

In these tempestuous days when, to and fro

The serpent, Evil, goes and strews his way

With dragon's teeth that play

Their part as once they did in Jason's day;

And War, with menace loud,

And footsteps, metal-slow,

And eyes a crimson hot,

Is seen, against the Heaven a burning blot

Of blood and tears and woe:

Now when no mortal living seems to know

Whither to turn for hope, we turn to thee,

And such as thou art, asking “What's to be?”

And that thou point the path

Above Earth's hate and wrath,

And Madness, stalking with his torch aglow

Amid the ruins of the Nations slow

Crumbling to ashes with Old Empire there

In Europe's tiger lair.

A temple may'st thou be,

A temple by the everlasting sea,

For the high goddess, Ideality,

Set like a star,

Above the peaks of dark reality:

Shining afar

Above the deeds of War,

Within the shrine of Love, whose face men mar

With Militarism,

That is the prism

Through which they gaze with eyes obscured of Greed,

At the white light of God's Eternity,

The comfort of the world, the soul's great need,

That beacons Earth indeed,

Breaking its light intense

With turmoil and suspense

And failing human Sense.

From thee a higher Creed

Shall be evolved.

The broken lights resolved

Into one light again, of glorious light,

Between us and the Everlasting, that is God.—

The all-confusing fragments, that are night,

Lift up thy rod

Of knowledge and from Truth's eyeballs strip

The darkness, and in armor of the Right,

Bear high the standard of imperishable light!

Cry out, “Awake!— I slept awhile!— Awake!

Again I take

My burden up of Truth for Jesus’ sake,

And stand for what he stood for, Peace and Thought,

And all that's Beauty-wrought

Through doubt and dread and ache,

By which the world to good at last is brought!”

No more with silence burdened, when the Land

Was stricken by the hand

Of war, she rises, and assumes her stand

For the Enduring; setting firm her feet

On what is blind and brute:

Still holding fast

With honor to the past,

Speaking a trumpet word,

Which shall be heard

As an authority, no longer mute.

Again, yea, she shall stand

For what Truth means to Man

For science and for Art and all that can

Make life superior to the things that weight

The soul down, things of hate

Instead of love, for which the world was planned;

May she demand

Faith and inspire it; Song to lead her way

Above the crags of Wrong

Into the broader day;

And may she stand

For poets still; poets that now the Land

Needs as it never needed; such an one

As he, large Nature's Son

Lanier, who with firm hand

Held up her magic wand

Directing deep in music such as none

Has ever heard

Such music as a bird

Gives of its soul, when dying,

And unconscious if it's heard.

So let her rise, mother of greatness still,

Above all temporal ill;

Invested with all old nobility,

Teaching the South decision, self control

And strength of mind and soul;

Achieving ends that shall embrace the whole

Through deeds of heart and mind;

And thereby bind

Its effort to an end

And reach its goal.

So shall she win

A wrestler with sin,

Supremely to a place above the years,

And help men rise

To what is wise

And true beyond their mortal finite scan —

The purblind gaze of man;

Aiding with introspective eyes

His soul to see a higher plan

Of life beyond this life; above the gyves

Of circumstance that bind him in his place

Of doubt and keep away his face

From what alone survives;

And what assures

Immortal life to that within, that gives

Of its own self,

And through its giving, lives,

And evermore endures.