The answer, sung by the Boston soloist,
Myron D. Whitney, was particularly impressive: --
Long as thine Art shall love true love,
Long as thy Science truth shall know,
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove,
Long as thy Law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy Brother every man below,
So long, dear Land of all my love,
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!
Soon after finishing the Centennial Cantata, Lanier started upon
a much longer centennial poem which, as the "Psalm of the West",
was published in "Lippincott's Magazine", June, 1876,
and for which he received $300. "By the grace of God,"
he writes to Bayard Taylor, April 4, 1876, "my centennial Ode is finished.
I now only know how divine has been the agony of the last three weeks,
during which I have been rapt away to heights where all my own purposes
as to a revisal of artistic forms lay clear before me,
and where the sole travail was of choice out of multitude."
This poem was written with the idea of a symphony in his mind.
One of the last things he planned was to write the music for it.
The poem as a whole is a musical rhapsody rather than a self-contained
work of art. Although there are fancies and obscurities,
the general theme, the magnificent opening lines, and the Columbus sonnets,
with here and there lines of imaginative power, make it noteworthy.
The poem is a passionate assertion of the triumph of freedom in America, --
freedom, the Eve of this tall Adam of lands.
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