Three generations pass in righteousness; A fourth begins, and still from strand to strand 1840 Peace rules, love reigns, and wealth and wisdom bless The banded nations, walking hand in hand; Christ's word supreme above a willing land, Where rich and poor, common their goods, their gold, Seeking God's glory, free and equal stand, Loving each one his neighbor, as of old; Forebeam of day divine[56], when night's dull mists have rolled. That restful day shall dawn; but e'en as storm, Darkness and devastation, judgments dire, Changed with convulsive throe the land's first form, 1850 Made mountains plains, plains mountains, purged with fire And flood this soil--as saw my nation's sire, Ere light and peace looked down from realms above;-- So shall it be[57], and more, when heaven's hot ire, Besoming a world's iniquity, shall move, In burning, melting might, the gold, the dross, to prove. Two centuries of love the land caress; Buried the ancient feud, and banished vice; When pride, to breed anew the old distress, Crawls like a serpent to this paradise: 1860 Again the tempter's wiles the weak entice; Again the fall, the sorrow and the shame; Again, while angels weep, do fiends rejoice; For now divided hearts, with hate aflame, Belie with wicked deeds their righteous faith and fame. Farewell to peace and power forever past! Deepest in crime the once delightsome race, Which melts as would the avalanche if cast Into the furnace of the red sun's face[58]. Men vie in deeds that devils would debase; 1870 Southland 'gainst Northland strives with might insane; Backward, still backward, bends the bloody chase[59]; Crimson the land with carnage; main to main Surges a sea of slaughter--millions are the slain! The white dissolves; the swart, the red, remains. Night clothes the continents, and 'thwart the gloom No ray descends on shadowed peaks or plains, From history's sun. Darkness, a living doom, Mantles mind, soul, making the land one tomb. Then bursts the dawn--breaks forth the East in light, 1880 Where Japheth, cramped and straitened, cries for room. Rent mystery's veil, naked, in savage plight, Now occidental realms greet oriental sight[60]! First found by him whose faith was mightiest, And now by one whose patience[61] most excels. Ere storm-pushed prow hath pierced the wordless West, A kingly soul, unthroned, uncrowned, compels The homage of a queen. His mind dispels The gathered gloom of ages; mutineers And malcontents his presence calms and quells. 1890 Past threatening reefs of bigotry he steers, And builds a bridge of life that binds the hemispheres.