O Beautiful! My Country!
By James Russell Lowell
This is a part of Lowell’s “Commemoration Ode” written in honor of the heroes of Harvard College, killed in the Civil War. Lowell here imagines America as a beautiful woman—a Goddess of Liberty—now fully restored to her worshipers.
O beautiful! My Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-disheveled hair
O’er such sweet brows as never other wore,...
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?5
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!