The Democratic Advocate

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CENTENNIAL CANTATA

Mr. Sidney Lanier, of the Baltimore Peabody Orchestra, has written the text of the Cantata to be given at the opening of the Centennial Exposition. He entitles it

THE CENTENNIAL MEDITATION OF COLUMBIA.

From this hundred-terraced height
Sight more large with nobler light
Ranges down yon towering years:
Humbler smiles and lordlier tears
Shine and fall, shine and fall,
While old voices rise and call
Yonder where the to-and-fro
Weltering of my Long-Ago
Moves about the moveless base
Far below my resting-place.

Mayflower, Mayflower, slowly hither flying,
Subdued Westward o'er yon billowing peaks,
Hear! within thy hold the Pilgrims
Wind: without the deep in rain replying
Gray-lipped waves shout thee, shouting, crying
Ye shall meet

Jamestown, out of the
Plymouth, then—then, Albany—
Winter cries, Ye are men: ye are men!
Fate cries

; hard
Kings cry,

: Might
ongrown cries,
Your Andrews that
say:
Then old Shapes and Hulks of things,
Framed like Faiths or clothed like Kings
Charts or Cloudy ones Ashed and A
Drawn foul Roads in alien Sky
War, Land but most busy lords,
Tortured with lithe and poisoned
Error,
Terror, Hate and Crime,
All in a
whimly night of time

cried to me from God and man,
They claim we be!
Horror not
whispering years in the dark,

Puritan: whispering ye to the dark
It took him, like an arrow shot true to its mark,

Darts through the tyrant's heart of Denial,
As Perseverance and Labor and conflict-annulled Trial
and oft the
search
Failed, still beginning,

Failed,
but not sinning
To God through the superior death of the Night
Toll, ye on wild brothers' kin near-dark the Night
mainly.
Toll, and thrive, and knit o'er, and replenish
utter,
for days
Sow
false to God's oft-granted grace,
Now Praise to Man's undaunted face
Yet Spirit
Prophet to the land, despite the war
Baltimore.
I was; I am so shall be—
How long, Good Angel, O, how long?
Sigh me from Heaven a man's own song?

Inspire us thine Art shall love true love,
Lo, as thy Science truth shall know

, lo, as thine Peace harmony do dove.
Let as thy Law by day shall
Love as thy God is, God above,
Thy brother every man below.
Ye know, dear Land of all my love

O Music, from this height of time my word untold:
"Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall rise!"
In by Leto similar all Day's heavy Yearn, behold:
DIVINE
Mid-heaven unroll thy chords in friendly flag: un-
maried.
And ways the world's tend light: welcome to the
land to fight