Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Julia Ward How. Now, this week I'm choosing poems, well, other than yesterday's guest spot, I'm choosing poems by opening up Harold Bloom's collection that he edited, the best poems of the English language.

I'm opening it up at random, and I'm reading what I come to. Today, I opened it up to this poem.

It is by Julia Ward. How, as I said, and it's called the Battle Him of the Republic.

You probably know this as a song, and it did become a song, but it was not originally a song. So I'm going to read the poem,

and I'm not going to sing it. I'm going to actually read it, and then I'm going to share a few

comments with you that Harold Bloom had about this poem in the collection, and then I'll read it

one more time. So here it is, Julia Ward Howes, Battle Him of the Republic.

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. I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling

camps. They have built him an altar in the evening dews and damps. I can read his righteous

sentence by the dimming and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel,

writ and 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. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat.

O, be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet, how a 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 die to make men free while God is marching on.

...