 
Julia W. Howe
From the Ethers to the Earth
A Sacred and Divine Spark of Liberty Sparked a Revolution
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
The Happiness
They Fought For
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Born:
May 27, 1819, New York, New York.
Died:
October 17, 1910, Middletown, Rhode Island.
Buried:
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Words:
Julia W. Howe, 1861, alt. This hymn was born during the American civil
war, when Howe visited a Union Army camp on the Potomac River near
Washington, D. C. She heard the soldiers singing the song “John Brown’s
Body,” and was taken with the strong marching beat. She wrote the words
the next day:
I awoke in the grey
of the morning, and as I lay waiting for dawn, the long lines of the
desired poem began to entwine themselves in my mind, and I said to
myself, “I must get up and write these verses, lest I fall asleep and
forget them!” So I sprang out of bed and in the dimness found an old
stump of a pen, which I remembered using the day before. I scrawled the
verses almost without looking at the paper.
The hymn appeared
in the Atlantic Monthly
in 1862. It was sung at the funeral of the American senator Robert Kennedy.
Music:
“John Brown’s Body,” possibly by John William Steffe. John Brown was an
American abolitionist who led a short lived insurrection to free
the slaves.
* * ~ *
*
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.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! 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.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! 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.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! 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.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! 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 live to make men free;
[originally …let us
die to make men free]
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.
He is coming like
the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
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