Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta: Verses about Freedom

Come on the sea, beloved,
Fearless and free;
Leave friends and wealth behind;
Come, come with me.
My bark on the water shines
A fairy thing; -
See her pennon, mast, and keel!
She is but a little shell,
Yet there I am king.

The earth was made for the slave,
Oh maiden free!
But for man, the stern and brave,
The boundless sea.
The waves breathe in their flow
A mystery,
And tenderly they sing,
In their soft murmuring, -
Love, Liberty.

A glorious vision burst
On Europe's dazzled sight,
Upon that day when first
Columbia sprang to light; -
When our NEW WORLD, till then concealed,
In virgin beauty stood revealed.

But more sublime that day
When the young nation rose,
And cast her chains away,
And dared her tyrant foes:
Thrones quaked, and despots trembled then,
For bonds were rent and slaves were men.

The torch of Liberty,
Relighted on that day,
Streamed over land and sea
With brighter, holier ray.
Hail to our Country! hail to thee,
Auspicious day that saw her free!

Let the star-spangled flag
Upon the free air float;
Let hill, and vale, and crag,
Prolong the cannon's note:
'Live the Republic!' let this be
The watch-word of our liberty.

Maiden! in whose kindling eye,
Burns the fire of prophecy,
On whose brow its glories shine,
Priestess at the hidden shrine;
Tell me what fair visions rise,
As the future greets thine eyes.
Thither where thou still dost turn,
Does a bright Shekinah burn?
Does thy outstretched, beckoning hand,
Point us to a promised land,
Where the rage of War no more
Shall drench the crimsoned earth with gore?
Where no more, with features gaunt,
Shall stalk the haggard form of Want,
Nor Misery's wail, nor Famine's cries
Upon the ear of Plenty rise,
When the voice of Liberty
Shall bid the earth's oppressed go free?
Thou, on whom the Future beams,
Tell me, are these idle dreams?

'As the messenger went forth,
Seeking o'er the deluged earth,
So, my gaze hath wandered wide,
O'er the Future's troubled tide.
As across the waters dark,
The bird returned to that lone bark,
With the leaf of olive tree,
So return I unto thee.
Not yet do wind and wave subside;
Not yet do land and sea divide;
No verdant earth the vision cheers,
No peak of Ararat appears;
But spanning all that troubled sky,
The Bow of Promise shines on high.'

Italia! in thy bleeding heart,
I thought, e'en hope was dead;
That from thy scarred and prostrate form,
The spark of life had fled.

I thought, as Memory's sunset glow
Its radiance o'er thee cast,
That all thy glory and thy fame
Were buried in the past.

Twice Mistress of the world! I thought
Thy star had set in gloom;
That all thy shrines and monuments
Were but thy spirit's tomb.

The mausoleum of the world,
Where Art her spoils might keep;
Where pilgrims from all shrines might come,
To wonder and to weep.

The thunders of the Vatican
Had long since died away;
Saint Peter's chair seemed tottering,
And crumbling to decay.

Thy ancient line of Pontiff Kings
Was to the past allied;
And oft in Freedom's holy wars
They fought not on her side.

The sacred banner of the Cross
Was trailing, soiled and torn;
And often had the hostile ranks
That blessed ensign borne.

But from her death-like slumber now,
  The seven-hilled city wakes:
Italia! on thy shrouded sky,
A gleam of morning breaks.

Along the Alps and Appenines
Runs an electric thrill;
A golden splendor lights once more
The Capitolian hill.

And hopes, bright as thy sunny skies,
Are o'er thy future cast;
The future that upon thee beams,
As glorious as thy past.

The laurels that thy Caesars wore,
Were dyed with crimson stains;
Their triumphs glittered with the spoil
Won on thy battle plains.

But for thy Pontiff Prince, to-day,
A laurel might'st thou twine,
Unsullied as the spotless life
He lays upon thy shrine.

For him might the triumphal car
Ascend the hill again;
No slaves, bound to the chariot wheels,
Should swell the lengthened train: -

Such train, as in her proudest days,
Was never seen in Rome, -
Of captives from the dungeon freed, -
Of exiles welcomed home.

When, gazing on the doubtful strife,
The Hebrew leader prayed,
The friends of Israel gathered round,
His drooping hands they staid.

And thus around the Patriarch's chair,
The friends of Freedom stand, -
All eager, though it falters not,
To stay his lifted hand.

And in a clearer, firmer tone,
Is heard their rallying cry;
From AEtna to the Alps it sounds:
'For God and Liberty!'

As when the sun in darkness sets,
And night falls on the earth,
Along the azure fields above
The stars of heaven come forth;

So when the sun of Liberty
Grows dim to mortal eyes,
From out the gloom, like radiant stars,
The world's true heroes rise.

The men of human destiny,
Whom glorious dreams inspire;
High-priests of Freedom, in whose souls
Is shrined the sacred fire.

The fire that through the wilderness
In steadfast lustre streams;
That on the future, dim and dark,
Sheds its effulgent beams.

Thus, oh Hungaria! through the night
That wraps thee in its gloom,
Light from one burning soul streams forth,
A torch above thy tomb.

Thy tomb! oh no - the mouldering shroud
The worm awhile must wear,
Ere, from its confines springing forth,
He wings the upper air.

Thy tomb! then from its door ere long
The stone shall roll away,
Thou shalt come forth, and once again
Greet the new-risen day.

The day that prayed and waited for
So long, shall surely rise,
As surely as to-morrow's sun
Again shall greet our eyes.

What though before the shape evoked
The coward heart has quailed,
And when the hour, the moment came,
The recreant arm has failed: -

What though the apostate wields the sword
With fratricidal hand,
And the last Romans wander forth
In exile o'er the land: -

What though suspended o'er thee hangs
The Austrian's glittering steel;
What though thy heart is crushed beneath
The imperial Cossack's heel: -

Not to the swift is given the race,
The battle to the strong;
Up to the listening ear of God
Is borne the mighty wrong.

From Him the mandate has gone forth,
The giant Power must fall;
Oh Prophet! read'st thou not the doom,
The writing on the wall!

The slaves of Power, the sword, the scourge,
The scaffold and the chain,
Awhile may claim their hecatombs
Of hero martyrs slain.

But they that war with Tyranny
Still mightier weapons bear;
Winged, arrowy thoughts, that pierce like light,
Impalpable as air.

Thoughts that strike through the triple mail,
That spread, and burn, and glow,
More quenchless than that fire the Greeks
Rained on their Moslem foe.

Rest, rest in peace, heroic shades,
Whose blood like water ran:
For every crimson drop ye shed,
Shall rise an arméd man.

Rest, rest in peace, heroic souls,
Who wander still on earth;
THOUGHTS, your immortal messengers,
Are on their mission forth.

The pioneers of Liberty,
Invincible they throng;
They scale and undermine the towers
And battlements of Wrong.

Speak! Sages, Poets, Patriots, speak!
And the dark pile shall fall,
As at the Prophet's trumpet tones
Once fell the city's wall.

On what sweet shore the blue AEgean laves,
Where loveliness is wedded to decay, -
Beauty to desolation, - 'mid the graves
Of an immortal race, and ruins, gray
With the dim veil of years, a sleeper lay; -
And in his dream, Time's never-ebbing tide
Rolled back, and bore him to that earlier day,
When Greece was decked in beauty, like a bride,
Glory upon her path and freedom by her side.

Against the radiance of her azure sky,
Rose many a pillared fane, divinely wrought,
Whose marble forms defied mortality; -
There pale Philosophy unveiled, and taught
Her mystic lore, and waged her war of thought,
And all her bright and baseless visions wove; -
There Art her never-dying treasures brought:
He saw Apelles' glowing canvas move,
And at Pygmalion's prayer the statue wake to love.

Then came her bards, her orators and sages; -
Once more he heard those voices that had rung
Down through the vista of succeeding ages:
'The blind old bard of Scio's isle' there strung
His matchless lyre, and breathed the earliest song:
And now Demosthenes before him stood,
Pouring his tide of eloquence, that strong,
Deep and o'erwhelming, swayed the multitude,
As the invisible wind sways the wild ocean's flood.

Armed warriors too were there, their helmets gleaming
On deathless Marathon's green, sea-girt plain,
That now with Persia's choicest blood was streaming:
Thermopylae's 'three hundred' fought again;
Again its pass was piled with countless slain,
From the invader's host, as on that day
When Sparta's bravest sons had vowed to drain
Their heart's best blood for her. There, as he lay,
These glorious visions passed, in beautiful array.

The dreamer woke, - he rested there alone,
By that high temple whence had Pallas fled:
Where once she lingered, now the crescent shone,
And round him wandered many a turbanned head,
Treading in mockery o'er the immortal dead;
And conscious Nature there, as if to screen
The nakedness of Ruin, had ouspread
Her gayest flowers to deck her saddest scene,
And hung, o'er mouldering walls, her tapestry of green.

And many a Grecian slave to Turkish foe
In hopeless bondage bowed the unwilling knee,
And, all too weak to strike the avenging blow,
To rend the galling chains of slavery,
And write their names once more among the free,
But humbled in despair, unmoved behold
Their shrine defaced, their altars borne away,
By every plunderer, even the hallowed mould
Of Marathon itself, exchanged for foreign gold.

And as he mused upon her buried worth,
'Mid her fallen columns and her ruined fanes, -
That none were there to lead her children forth;
To strike with them, and burst their servile chains,
And with their blood to wash away the stains
That their great name on Freedom's record dyed, -
He touched his harp, and the enchanting strains,
The world was hushed to hear - and then aside
Bade Poesy retire, and made sad Greece his bride.

A fitting bride for one like him, who stood
On that high steep, where few have dared their flight;
Against whose name Time's all resistless flood
Shall dash in vain; who, through decay and blight
And desolation, dazzled with the light
That fast consumed him, where he stood on high,
Like a lone star on the dark brow of night: -
He sleeps upon that shore - a Grecian sky,
For a high soul like his, were fitting canopy.

Rest, warrior bard! Above thy head shall bloom
The greenest laurel of Peneus' tide; -
Genius shall come a pilgrim to thy tomb,
And for her champion Freedom turn aside,
To weep the bitter tears she may not hide;
And thy young handmaid, Poesy, shall shed
Her brightest halo there; and Greece, thy bride,
Shall give to thee (and oh, can more be said!)
A name to live with hers - a home among her Dead.