Father of nations! Judge divine!
From Thy blessed realms above
Thine ear to prayers and hymns incline,
Breathed by patriotic love.
Is there one upon this earth,
Who in welfare or in woe,
For the country of his birth,
Feels not sympathy’s strong glow?

Oh! may we not this feeling trace
To creation’s primal date?
When the great parent of our race
Felt the exile’s bitter fate?
His first tears were not for toil,
But for his lost flower-land—
Paradise, his native soil,
Closed on him by God’s command.

That pure sentiment was nursed
When man’s innocence had waned;
His progeny, where’er dispersed,
Kept this virtue unprofaned.
Native to all human kind
Is the seed of Liberty!
Where no tyrant’s law may bind
Souls by nature’s God made free.

Brethren! let hearts and voices blend
In one deep and earnest prayer,
That Heaven’s blessings may descend
Upon Freedom’s hallowed sphere;
Where untrammeled faith may sing
Fearless of the bigot’s frown,
But to One Celestial King
Bowing her pure spirit down.

Where, upon wisdom’s equal plan,
Conscience no controller dreads,
Secure that on the rights of man
No usurping despot treads;
Where unto the highest throne,
Free-will offerings are brought,
Homage to that One alone,
In whose image we are wrought.

Fountain of justice, truth, and peace!
May these virtues animate,
Until life itself shall cease,
All the sons of freedom’s state.
Grant, that when transferred to earth,
(As religion’s charter shows,)
In heaven, where our souls had birth,
They at last may find repose.