Prayer for Home Land

From the Omaha Daily Bee, November 1, 1914. By E. A. Guest.

God bless the old United States,
    God keep her people strong;
God guard the peace within her gates
    And fill her land with song.
Teach us who dwell beneath her flag
    To cherish peaceful ways;
To cease of cannon’s strength to brag
    And uniforms to praise.

God bless the old United States,
    Where Freedom’s banner flies,
Where joyously the mother waits
    With bright and smiling eyes,
The father, coming home at night,
    His day of toiling done,
And where to meet him with delight
    His happy children run.

Here all the tears are honest tears
    And pain is honest pain,
And here, secure throughout the years
    The toilers’ homes remain.
Here firesides are not desolate
    By needless shot and shell,
But honor and reward await
    The men who labor well.

God bless the old United States,
    God bless her people, too;
God keep forever at her gates
    The old red, white and blue.
And may its beauties never die,
    But every year increase;
God grant that flag shall ever fly
    Above a land at peace.