Song of the Democratic Review of It’s Birth-Day, October 1st, 1857

IF you smile at the Snn for that pride when his eye
With a broad blaze of triumph looks round on the sky;
At the Star of the North when the mariner turns
To the place where its beacon unchangeably burns—
Then of right may you smile at the triumph that glows
On my page as it thinks of the Present and Past;
Of the glory that first on ray being arose,
And is still in unfading, broad radiance cast.

For the Soul of Democracy smiled on my birth;
And a thrilling of rapture shook Liberty’s earth;
And the Genius of Poesy uttered his psalm
From the North’s icy rock to the South’s unny palm;
And a chorus of gladness rose np from the clime
Of the happy Hesperides, fearless and free,
For she saw that she had in that moment sublime,
Her own mightiest champion glowing in me.

How the strength of the statesman shone over my page!
There the harp of the poet has laurelled the Age;
There the exquisite pencil of star-wooing Art
Like a vision of Paradise, burst on the heart;
There the graver of History, earnest and true,
Told the wonderful march of a changeable world;
While o’er all, as the pages in radiance grew,
Was the Flag of my Country for ever unfurled.

And 0 still as of yore is the splendor beheld
O’er my thought-bearing pages unceasingly swelled,
For the years, rolling up, have but strengthened my forn.
As it glows in the sunlight or battles the storm;
And I grow with the growth of my wonderful land,
While I gaze on her majesty awing the earth,
And all humbly but joyously holding her hand,
Am the mirror reflecting her glorious worth.