[MUSIC] "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

[rfmcdonald]

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.

""The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - Gordon Lightfoot (HD w/ Lyrics)" (Watch on YouTube)

The more that I think about it, the more that I'm certain that the 1861 US Civil War classic, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic, is one of my favourite songs. I first learned it in choir practice at L.M. Montgomery Elementary School, back when I was in Grade 5 and under the tutelage of Mrs. Gay. I love its rousing music, its lyrics' call to determined holy war against a pitiless enemy, its uplifting chorus. I say this as a citizen of a nation, I might mention, that probably formed only as a confluence of mostly Civil War-related factor: official sympathy for a Confederate secession that would weaken the Union, popular opposition to slavery, cross-border terrorist raids that the post-Civil War Union let bitter Irish-American wages against Britain's remaining North America possessions, et cetera. The ungovernability of the Province of Canada is probably the chief cause of Canadian unification that's internal to Canada.

It's still a powerful song for me. It might be my vestigial interest in Christianity post-secularization that attracts me to the language, it might be the knowledge of Confederate society under slavery that makes me think as well of the song aimed against the Confederacy as I do (and, incidentally, gives me one of several reasons not to take to Firefly), it might just be because it's a good song written for a good cause. Regardless, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is grand.