Mirth and Motivation

“For you have been called to live in freedom. Use your freedom to serve one another in love.” Galatians 5:13

Motivation 2020: 20 Famous July 4th Poems To Remember #IndependenceDay

Motivation 2020: 20 Famous July 4th Poems To Remember #IndependenceDay

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense. Barack Obama

Happy 244th Independence Day!: As we prepare to celebrate this very important Independence day in American history, I can’t help but stop to reflect on why this truly matters. We have been battling a global pandemic that has decimated lives across the globe and created a new normal for us all. We must use this time to reflect on what freedom/independence truly means and how it impacts all of our lives in this great country. The Black Lives Matter movement has brought systemic racism and inequities to the forefront and as we celebrate on July 4th, let us remember that the right to liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness we desire for ourselves should also be what we must want for everyone else.
How did we reach Independence Day? 244 years ago, on July 4, 1776, the forefathers commemorated the adoption of the Declaration of Independence; it was an auspicious day filled with optimism for the future of this newly birthed, great nation. It signified the birth of the United States of America and the liberation of her original thirteen colonies from British rule. The actual legal separation occurred on the 2nd, not the 4th. July 4th is the date the documents were ratified and the circuitous journey that many took to arrive on this new land in search of a new life reached a milestone. Let us not forget that this is a nation built on the backs of millions who had a dream of a better life; of gaining personal freedom.

To celebrate Independence Day 2020, I have selected 20 Famous Poems/Lyrical Poems that speak to the meaning of July 4th, Independence Day, Freedom, and more.  Some have been excerpted due to their length, some are poems that became lyrics to popular songs, while others are added in full. Take a moment to read them all and contemplate their message. Here is a list of the 20 poems if you wish to mark them for your own enjoyment: The New Colossus By Emma Lazarus, Concord Hymn By Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Star-Spangled Banner By Francis Scott Key, America By Claude McKay, America The Beautiful – A Poem for July 4. By Katharine Lee Bates, America, A Prophecy By William Blake – an Excerpt, The Congressional Library [excerpt] By Amy Lowell, Good Night Poem by Carl Sandburg, Banneker By Rita Dove, Paul Revere’s Ride By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I Hear America Singing By Walt Whitman, Let America Be America Again – an excerpt By Langston Hughes, To The Fourth of July – By Swami Vivekananda, Learning to love America By Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Liberty Bell By J. P. Dunn, July 4th by May Swenson, Fourth of July By John Brehm, Immigrants in Our Own Land By Jimmy Santiago Baca, The Fourth of July Parade By Fran Haraway, and America By Allen Ginsberg – an Excerpt.

READ: Motivation Mondays: 100 July 4th Quotes – Independence Day
Motivation Mondays: Optimism. Life. Independence Day
Motivation Mondays: Dream BIGGER – Independence Day

The New Colossus By Emma Lazarus via the poetryfoundation
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Concord Hymn By Ralph Waldo Emerson via poets.org
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

The Star-Spangled Banner By Francis Scott Key via poets.org
O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming;
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
‘Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land,
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just.
And this be our motto— “In God is our trust; ”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

America By Claude McKay via poetryfoundation
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

America The Beautiful – A Poem for July 4. By Katharine Lee Bates via Wikipedia
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

America, A Prophecy By William Blake – an Excerpt. (Read the full poem at Bartleby.com)
Preludium – an excerpt
The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o’er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron.
Crown’d with a helmet and dark hair the nameless Female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven—no other arms she need!
Invulnerable tho’ naked, save where clouds roll round her loins
Their awful folds in the dark air: silent she stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise,
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay’d his fierce embrace.

A Prophecy – an excerpt
THE GUARDIAN PRINCE of Albion burns in his nightly tent:
Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America’s shore,
Piercing the souls of warlike men who rise in silent night.
Washington, Franklin, Paine, and Warren, Gates, Hancock, and Green
Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albion’s fiery Prince. 5

Washington spoke: ‘Friends of America! look over the Atlantic sea;
A bended bow is lifted in Heaven, and a heavy iron chain
Descends, link by link, from Albion’s cliffs across the sea, to bind
Brothers and sons of America; till our faces pale and yellow,
Heads depress’d, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis’d, 10
Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows of the whip
Descend to generations, that in future times forget.’

The strong voice ceas’d; for a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea:
The eastern cloud rent: on his cliffs stood Albion’s wrathful Prince,
A dragon form, clashing his scales: at midnight he arose, 15
And flam’d red meteors round the land of Albion beneath;
His voice, his locks, his awful shoulders, and his glowing eyes
Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night.

“I’d like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free and wanted other people to be also free.” Rosa Parks

Motivation 2020: 20 Famous July 4th Poems To Remember #IndependenceDay

Motivation 2020: 20 Famous July 4th Poems To Remember #IndependenceDay

I believe our flag is more than just cloth and ink. It is a universally recognized symbol that stands for liberty, and freedom. It is the history of our nation, and it’s marked by the blood of those who died defending it. John Thune

What are your plans for this special day? As we join our loved ones to celebrate July 4th, take a moment to educate those around you on the history of Independence Day, read the Declaration of Independence and teach your loved ones about the long journey that got YOU here. After all, this is a nation of immigrants. It is not enough to eat, drink and be merry… take time to teach yourself and others about how this impacts your own dreams, celebrate your independence, cherish the liberties you enjoy, and stay motivated to ensure that others can have access to the same rights we wish for our loved ones and ourselves.
READ: Motivation Mondays: Happy 4th Of July – Independence Day
Haiku: Happy Independence Day!
Motivation Mondays: FREEDOM

The Congressional Library [excerpt] By Amy Lowell via poets.org
Where else in all America are we so symbolized
As in this hall?
White columns polished like glass,
A dome and a dome,
A balcony and a balcony,
Stairs and the balustrades to them,
Yellow marble and red slabs of it,
All mounting, spearing, flying into color.
Color round the dome and up to it,
Color curving, kite-flying, to the second dome,
Light, dropping, pitching down upon the color,
Arrow-falling upon the glass-bright pillars,
Mingled colors spinning into a shape of white pillars,
Fusing, cooling, into balanced shafts of shrill and interthronging light.
This is America,
This vast, confused beauty,
This staring, restless speed of loveliness,
Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms,
Making grandeur out of profusion,
Afraid of no incongruities,
Sublime in its audacity,
Bizarre breaker of moulds,
Laughing with strength,
Charging down on the past,
Glorious and conquering,
Destroyer, builder,
Invincible pith and marrow of the world,
An old-world remaking,
Whirling into the no-world of all-colored light.

Good Night Poem by Carl Sandburg via poemhunter
Many ways to say good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water, and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
Many ways to spell good night.

Banneker By Rita Dove via poetryfoundation
What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?
Venerable, the good people of Baltimore
whispered, shocked and more than
a little afraid. After all it was said
he took to strong drink.
Why else would he stay out
under the stars all night
and why hadn’t he married?

But who would want him! Neither
Ethiopian nor English, neither
lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird
humming as he penned in his mind
another enflamed letter
to President Jefferson—he imagined
the reply, polite and rhetorical.
Those who had been to Philadelphia
reported the statue
of Benjamin Franklin
before the library

his very size and likeness.
A wife? No, thank you.
At dawn, he milked
the cows, then went inside
and put on a pot to stew
while he slept. The clock
he whittled as a boy
still ran. Neighbors
woke him up
with warm bread and quilts.
At nightfall, he took out

his rifle—a white-maned
figure stalking the darkened
breast of the Union—and
shot at the stars, and by chance
one went out. Had he killed?
I assure thee, my dear Sir!
Lowering his eyes to fields
sweet with the rot of spring, he could see
a government’s domed city
rising from the morass and spreading
in a spiral of lights…

Paul Revere’s Ride By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – an excerpt (read the full poem at poets.org)

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing overall.

I Hear America Singing By Walt Whitman via poetryfoundation
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Let America Be America Again – an excerpt By Langston Hughes  Read the full poem at poetryfoundation
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

To The Fourth of July – By Swami Vivekananda via poemhunter
Behold, the dark clouds melt away,
That gathered thick at night, and hung
So like a gloomy pall above the earth!
Before thy magic touch, the world
Awakes. The birds in chorus sing.

The flowers raise their star-like crowns—
Dew-set, and wave thee welcome fair.
The lakes are opening wide in love
Their hundred thousand lotus-eyes
To welcome thee, with all their depth.

All hail to thee, thou Lord of Light!
A welcome new to thee, today,
O Sun! Today thou sheddest Liberty!
Bethink thee how the world did wait,
And search for thee, through time and clime.

Some gave up home and love of friends,
And went in quest of thee, self-banished,
Through dreary oceans, through primeval forests,
Each step a struggle for their life or death;
Then came the day when work bore fruit,
And worship, love, and sacrifice,
Fulfilled, accepted, and complete.

Then thou, propitious, rose to shed
The light of Freedom on mankind.
Move on, O Lord, in thy resistless path!
Till thy high noon o’erspreads the world.
Till every land reflects thy light,
Till men and women, with uplifted head,
Behold their shackles broken, and
Know, in springing joy, their life renewed!

The details for Motivation Mondays are below. Join in! The themes for JUN – JUL 2020 are:

JUNE

06/01 – 02 BLACKOUT DAY,
06/07 – 13 St Anthony
06/14
06/21 – 19 Juneteenth, 20 World Refugee Day, 21 International Yoga, 21 Father’s Day, 24 St John the Baptist, 26 Against Illicit Trafficking,
06/28 – 30 BET Awards

JULY

07/01 – 01 SUMMER, 04 Independence Day, 06 D-Day,
07/05 – 07 World Chocolate Day
07/12 – 18 Nelson Mandela Day,
07/19 – 24 International Self-Care Day
07/26 – 28 Parents Day, 30 International Day of Friendship, World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

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