• Author: Whittier, John G.
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 1 2 1918
• Tags:
• poetry

A NEW YEAR INVOCATION

Our father’s God! From out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet, today, united, free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done And trust Thee for the opening one.

For art and labor met in truce, For beauty made the bride of use, We thank Thee; but withal we crave The austere virtues strong to save— The honor proof to place or gold, The manhood never bought or sold!

O, make Thou us through ceuturies long In peace secure, in justice strong. Around our gift of freedom draw The safeguards of Thy righteous law And, cast in some diviner mold, Let the new cycle shame the old.

—John Greenleaf Whitter.