  FROM the jangle and clangour of creeds, from the bitterness born of division, From the sorrow and shame and strife, dead shades of a bygone wrong, A spirit shall rise with the national pride to turn the black past to derision, And Tolerance, nurtured of Freedom, descend on a land that has waited its coming long. Did you think, O partisan, this was the lesson that history taught you— An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, crude code of a barbarous age? Did you think that the wisdom evolved from the cycles chaotic had brought you To a time when our island page should be read as a gospel of hate on a blood-smeared page? You boast that you follow ancient faiths, that you rally around a standard, Under the shadow of which, for the cause they upheld, your ancestors freely and fearlessly died. Blood will have blood; you demand an account of the numberless lives that were squandered; For a section, a creed, and a party, the larger hope and the fuller life must be ruthlessly stultified. Yet surely a time shall come when, out of disunion united, Welded together as links of a chain that is strong to bind and endure, Before the eyes of a wondering world a mighty pledge shall be plighted, And a nation of nations shall rise of her sons allied, in her children’s love secure. From the sound and the fury of sects, from the strife fratricidal, From the fierce fanatic’s clamour, the slur of the bigot’s brand, A spirit of love shall arise to join the hands of the North and South in a deathless bridal, And a peace that surpasseth the knowledge of man descend on a storm-tossed land. |
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