Why sing the past, whose hollow sounding years
Lie in dim graves with mail-clad skeletons,
The muttered thunder of ten thousand guns,
And baleful light of keen and level spears?
The past is dead; the future now uprears
Beyond the land where Lethe's river runs,
Its glad, young face made glorious by great suns,
And loud and far ring out its lusty cheers.
Oh, time of conquest and victorious days,
When manhood, free from chains, shall front the sky,
And dense oblivion hold grim want and wrong—
Are far shores washed by your on-rushing sprays?
And do we hear, in echoes rising high,
The resonant chorus of your triumph song?