I Knew You Once America

I knew you once, gentle land of plenty
Pine-covered hills and rustic valleys
Tranquil blue oceans lapping on snow laden peaks
Fertile green fields where it rained one and twenty.

We made tallow wax candles and churned cur own butter
Hunted for clothing and ate wild meat for our supper
Carved out a niche in freedom’s new world
Riches abounded in paradise uncovered.

Some got lazy and did not their own work
And stole souls from their homes, put them in chains
So we fought a war over bondage revealed
Our fathers’ words bravely stood up to the test.

Then factories hummed as we invented and grew
A beacon of hope to a near-medieval old world
We fashioned our light bulbs, our cars and our planes
The world was our oyster, we rose in its eyes.

Freedom’s defender in God did we trust
And carried that torch in our flag did it mean
We wanted truth and democracy for all peoples alive
Despots and tyrants were despised in wrath.

Now we have come to more modern times
Where truth is a casualty of convenience and greed
And the sunshine we loved is clouded by deceit
We are but fed lies by our government’s tools.

America my jewel, a diamond in God’s eye
Has been infiltrated by self-interest and guilt
Partisan back-biting has replaced the frontier spirit
We can’t even lead the kids, let alone the whole world.

The products of our choices have become monsters
We cannot control that which we have produced
Thomas and Ben rolling in colonial graves
A profane crassness bred from profound sinning.

I knew you once, in the history books of old
And I cry for a land of beauty and limitless free
Where men of ideals and vision once reigned
And saved their brothers the world ’round.

Those days have gone forever, those books have been burned
In racial strife. corporate creed. and political lies we die
We have sacrificed the important for the urgent
And given away God’s holy blessing for nothing at all.