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Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
Battle Hymn of the Republic
MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is
marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is
marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is
marching on."
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is
marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is
marching on.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic was published on the first page of
the February 1862 Atlantic Monthly without its (now) traditional refrain:
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
followed by repetition of the verses last line. It is listed among the
one-hundred most anthologized poems in the English language in:
Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition).
New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Additional information on its relationship to the earlier songs
Say, brothers, will you meet us? and John Brown's Body are detailed
in:
Elson, Louis C. The National Music of America. Boston: L. C. Page
and Company, 1899.
Howard, John Tasker. Our American Music. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1965.
Cornelius, Steven. Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2004.
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