America for Me
'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,--
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
So it's home again, home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled;
But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!
I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack:
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,--
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.
Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
--Henry Van Dyke
A Creed for Americans
We believe in the dignity of man and the worth and value of every living soul, no matter in what body housed, no matter whether born in comfort or born in poverty, no matter to what stock he belongs, what creed he professes, what job he holds.
We believe that every man should have a free and equal chance to develop his own best abilities under a free system of government, where the people themselves choose those who are to rule them and where no one man can set himself up as a tyrant or oppress the many for the benefit of the few.
We believe that free speech, free assembly, free elections, free practice of religion are the cornerstones of such a government. We believe that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the United States of America offer the best and most workable framework yet devised for such a government.
We believe in justice and law. We do not believe in curing an evil by substituting for it another and opposite evil. We are unalterably opposed to class hatred, race hatred, religious hatred, however manifested, by whomsoever instilled.
We believe that political freedom implies and acknowledges economic responsibility. We do not believ that any state is an admirable state that lets its people go hungry when they might be fed, ragged when they migh tbe clothed, sick when they might be well, workless when they might have work. We believe that it is the duty of all of us, the whole people working through our democratic system, to see that such conditions are remedied, whenever and wherever they exist in our country.
We believe that political freedom implies and acknowledged personal responsibility. We believe that we have a great and priceless heritage as a nation--not only a heritage of material resources but of liberties, dreams, ideals, ways of going forward. We believe it is our business, our right and our inescapable duty to maintain and expand that heritage. We believe that such a heritage cannot be maintained by the lacklustre, the selfish, the bitterly partisan or the amiably doubtful. We believe it is something bigger than party, bigger than our own small ambitions. We believe it is worth the sacrifice of ease, the long toil of years, the expense of our heart's blood.
We know that our democratic system is not perfect. We know that it permits injustices and wrongs. But with our whole hearts we believe in its continuous power of self-remedy. That power is not a theory--it has been proven. Through the years, democracy has given more people freedom, less persecution and a higher standard of living than any other system we know. Under it, evils have been abolished, injustices remedied, old wounds healed, not by terror and revolution but by the slow revolution of consent in the minds of all the people. While we maintain democracy, we maintain the greatest power of a people can possess--the power of gradual, efficient, and lawful change.
Most of all, we believe in democracy itself--in its past, its present and its future--in democracy as a political system to live by--in democracy as the great hope in the minds of the free. We believe it so deeply rooted in the earth of this country that neither assault from without nor dissension from within can ever wipe it entirely from that earth. But, because it was established for us by the free-minded and the daring, it is our duty now, in danger as in security, to uphold and sustain it with all that we have and are. We believe that its future shall and must be even greater than its past. And to the future--as to the past of our forebears and the present of our hard-won freedom--we plede all we have to give.
--Stephen Vincent Benét
Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
