Our Watchword

This poem was written by Ellen Murray, a co-founder of the Penn School on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. The poem was originally published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on May 10, 1862.

We need a watchword for our hosts,
A watchword for each noble band,
To take the place of all our boasts,
To fill the air, to sweep the strand,
To sound mid Maine’s cathedral pines,
Or where gold-shored Pacific shines -
A watchword for our mighty land.

It must be strong; a word to thrill
The slowest pulse that ever beat,
To fire the heart’s deep citadel
With quenchless, solemn passion-heat;
May grow more brave than knights of yore,
When they that word of strength repeat.

It must be lasting; cannon tones
May shake the earth and then be still,
And nations’ passions, nations’ groans,
Cease quickly as the night wind’s thrill;
This word must be last, most like the sea
That soundeth on eternally,
With unexhausted, boundless will.

And pure – that we may never shrink
To name it in our holiest prayer;
So pure, that we may never think
That word too mean for God to hear,
And white-winged angels, as they stoop
To gather hymns of mortals up,
May smile to find our watchword there.

And high – our noblest must not rise
Above it, in their highest thought;
And old, that proudest memories
May in its utterance be inwrought;
And clear, that all the world may know
Who it our friend, who is our foe,
For whom and why the field is fought.

And breif; the dying must have time
To speak it with their dying breath,
Mid shock and roar and bloody slime,
And mists that hide the plain of death;
Brief, that each baby’s lips may be
Taught to pronounce it perfectly
For its first article of faith.

They who have met us, steel to steel,
Raised a new flag their curse to be,
Have chosen well; we hear it peal
Above their loudest battery;
We read it in the deeds that shame
Columbia's soil, the Christian name -
They shriek it, shout it, “Slavery.”

Give us a word to silence theirs,
As summer forces winter back,
As daylight, borned on eastern airs,
Exiles the night-power, grim and black,
That our watchword may fill the earth,
And theirs may have no second birth
Along our conquering army’s track.

There's but one word in every tongue
So lasting, pure, so clear, so high,
So short to speak, so wondrous strong;
We choose it for our battle-cry;
And “Freedom! Freedom!” evermore
Shall lead out hosts from shore to shore,
And fill with holier light out sky.
Ellen.