Columbia! Columbia! to glory arise,
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies,
Thy genius commands thee, with raptures behold,
While ages on ages thy splendors unfold:
Thy reign is the last and the noblest of time,
Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime;
Let crimes of the east ne’er encrimson thy name,
Be freedom, and science, and virtue thy fame.
...
New bards and new sages unrivalled shall soar
To fame unextinguished, when time is no more.
-Timothy Dwight
I stumbled recently on a painting I once loved as a young boy but had long since forgotten. “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” painted by Eastman Johnson in 1872, depicts a young girl facing a storm. The wind blows her hair and dress straight back, yet she leans into it. She holds her little books to her chest for protection and plants her left foot defiantly down. She gazes across the landscape. Her face, seen only in profile, conveys both a sense of waiting in anticipation and of being sternly prepared for whatever may come.
