Poems on Freedom

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And, is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.

by George Gordon Byron.

PURE blue Flag of heaven
With your silver stars,
Not beside those Crosses'
Blood-stained torture-bars:
Not beside the token
The foul sea-harlot gave,
Pure blue Flag of heaven,
Must you ever wave!
No, but young exultant,
Free from care and crime,
The soulless selfish England
Of this later time:
No, but, faithful, noble
Rising from her grave,
Flag of light and liberty,
For ever must you wave!

by Francis William Lauderdale Adams.

Dead to sin by the cross of Christ.

Rom. 6:1,2,6.

Shall we go on to sin
Because thy grace abounds;
Or crucify the Lord again,
And open all his wounds?

Forbid it, mighty God!
Nor let it e'er be said,
That we whose sins are crucified
Should raise them from the dead.

We will be slaves no more,
Since Christ has made us free;
Has nailed our tyrants to his cross,
And bought our liberty.

by Isaac Watts.

God bless our native land,
Land of the newly free,
Oh may she ever stand
For truth and liberty.

God bless our native land,
Where sleep our kindred dead,
Let peace at thy command
Above their graves be shed.

God help our native land,
Bring surcease to her strife,
And shower from thy hand
A more abundant life.

God bless our native land,
Her homes and children bless,
Oh may she ever stand
For truth and righteousness.

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

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.

by Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta.

In elder Greece, where fostering liberty
Nursed kindling Genius to adventure high,
Some master-hand achieved this urn of grace,
Within whose storied orb we fondly place
One precious ringlet from the sacred head
Of him, to more than Grecian virtue bred,
Who for his struggling country freedom won,
Heroic, self-controlling Washington!
Stranger! doth charm of art thy soul inspire,
Yet more, doth freedom's flame thy bosom fire?
Then own that votary's hand did ne'er consign
A dearer relic to a worthier shrine.

by John Kenyon.

Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page
And still wing on, untarnished of the name
We pinion to your bodies to assuage
Our envy of your freedom—we must maim


Because we are usurpers, and chagrined—
And take the wing and scar it in the hand.
Names we have, even, to clap on the wind;
But we must die, as you, to understand.


I dreamed that all men dropped their names, and sang
As only they can praise, who build their days
With fin and hoof, with wing and sweetened fang
Struck free and holy in one Name always.

by Harold Hart Crane.

I.
As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!

II.
When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding sheet
O'er the despot at our feet,
And dye it deep in the gore he has pour'd.

III.
Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew
Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!

by George Gordon Byron.

HIS MIND alone is kingly who (though one)
But venerates of present things or past
What he believeth good, kneeling to none
Save God and Truth! Who awed not by this vast
And shadowy scheme of Life, but anchored fast
In Love and sitting central like the sun
So gives his mental beams to pierce and run
Through all its secrets while his days may last;
And thus progressive, little faith hath he
For mysteries, till sounding them he hear
The gathered tones of their stirr’d depths agree
With that religious harmony severe
Which anthems to his spiritual ear
The invisible Presence of the Deity.

by Charles Harpur.

MUTE is thy wild harp, now, O bard sublime!
Who, amid Scotia's mountain solitude,
Great Nature taught to 'build the lofty rhyme,'
And even beneath the daily pressure, rude,
Of labouring poverty, thy generous blood,
Fired with the love of freedom--Not subdued
Wert thou by thy low fortune: but a time
Like this we live in, when the abject chime
Of echoing parasite is best approved,
Was not for thee--Indignantly is fled
Thy noble spirit; and no longer moved
By all the ills o'er which thine heart has bled,
Associate, worthy of the illustrious dead,
Enjoys with them 'the liberty it loved.'

by Charlotte Smith.

Forward ho! Forward ho! Soldiers of liberty,
Hope on; fight on; till man’s whole race shall be
Free of all good under heaven’s wide dome.
And doubt not, the earth that has grown old in sorrow
Shall grow young again in the light of that morrow
Predestined to make her fraternity’s home.
Forward ho! Forward ho! Lovers of truth and good!
Think on; write on; till earth’s whole herohood
Stand in one faith under heaven’s wide dome;
And shout to behold all the hilltops adorning
With sunflowers of glory the glow of that morning
Predestined to mark her fraternity’s home.

by Charles Harpur.

Ah, urged too late! from beauty's bondage free,
Why did I trust my liberty with thee?
And thou, why didst thou, with inhuman art,
If not resolved to take, seduce my heart?
Yes, yes, you said, for lovers' eyes speak true;
You must have seen how fast my passion grew:
And, when your glances chanced on me to shine,
How my fond soul ecstatic sprung to thine!
But mark me, fair one - what I now declare
Thy deep attention claims and serious care:
It is no common passion fires my breast;
I must be wretched, or I must be blessed!
My woes all other remedy deny;
Or, pitying, give me hope, or bid me die!

by James Thomson.

VIII

What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the-wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold,—but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

As in the deeps of embryonic night,
Out of unfathomable obscurities
Of Nature's womb, the little life-germs rise,
Pushing and pulsing upward to the light;
As, when the first day dawns on waking sight,
They leap to liberty and recognize
The golden sunshine and the morning skies
Their home and goal and heritage and right -

So do our brooding thoughts and deep desires
Grow in our souls, we know not how or why;
Grope for we know not what, all blind and dumb.
So, when the time is ripe, and one aspires
To free his thought in speech, ours hear the cry,
And to full birth and instant knowledge come.

by Ada Cambridge.

Thy days are done, thy fame begun;
Thy country's strains record
The triumphs of her chosen Son,
The slaughter of his sword!
The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored!

Though thou art fall'n, while we are free
Thou shalt not taste of death!
The generous blood that flow'd from thee
Disdain'd to sink beneath:
Within our veins its currents be,
Thy spirit on our breath!

Thy name, our charging hosts along,
Shall be the battle-word!
Thy fall, the theme of choral song
From virgin voices pour'd!
To weep would do thy glory wrong:
Thou shalt not be deplored.

by George Gordon Byron.

One moment mankind rides the crested wave,
A moment glorious, beyond recall;
And then the wave, with slow and massive fall,
Obliterates the beauty that it gave.
When discrowned king and manumitted slave
Are free and equal to be slaves of all,
Democracies in their wide freedom brawl,
And go down shouting to a common grave.
So one by one the petals of the rose
Shrivel and fade, and all its splendour goes
Back to the earth; and in her arms embraced
Through wintry centuries the dead seeds sleep
Till spring comes troubling them, and they unleap,
Once more their petals on the world to waste.

by Arthur Henry Adams.

CHANNING! my Mentor whilst my thought was young,
And I the votary of fair liberty,—
How hung I then upon thy glowing tongue,
And thought of love and truth as one with thee!
Thou wast the inspirer of a nobler life,
When I with error waged unequal strife,
And from its coils thy teaching set me free.
Be ye, his followers, to his leading true,
Nor privilege covet, nor the wider sway;
But hold right onward in his loftier way,
As best becomes, and is his rightful due.
If learning ’s yours,—gifts God doth least esteem,—
Beyond all gifts was his transcendent view:
O realize his Pentecostal dream!

by Amos Bronson Alcott.

Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.

She screams whenever monarchs meet,
And parliaments as well,
To bind the chains about her feet
And toll her knell.

And when the sovereign people cast
The votes they cannot spell,
Upon the pestilential blast
Her clamors swell.

For all to whom the power's given
To sway or to compel,
Among themselves apportion Heaven
And give her Hell.

Blary O'Gary.

by Ambrose Bierce.

Phew! 'T'is a stuffy and a stupid place,
This social edifice by Custom wrought -
This fenced enclosure wherein all are caught,
The great and small, the noble and the base,
And squeezed and flattened to one common face.
Air, air for springing fancy, errant thought!
Scope to make something of the seeming nought!
Room for the fleet foot and the open race!

Break out, O brother, braver than the rest,
Lover of Liberty, whose arm is strong!
Buttress our independence with thy breast,
And fight a passage through the stagnant throng.
Many will press behind thee, but they need
The stalwart captain, not afraid to lead.

by Ada Cambridge.

It may be that the stone which thou art heaving
From off thy people's neck shall fall and crush thee;
It may be that the sudden flood shall push thee
From off the rock, whence, prophet-like, believing
In God's great future, thou dost set it free;
Yet heave it, heave it heaven high, nor fear
To be o'erwhelmed in the first wild career
Of those long-prisoned tides of liberty.
That stone which thou hast lifted from the heart
Of a whole nation shall become to thee
A glorious monument, such as no art
E'er piled above a mortal memory:
Falling beneath it, thou shalt have a tomb
That shall make low the loftiest dome in Rome.

by Frances Anne Kemble.

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs;
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona’s twin-born progeny,
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearl to hogs,
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when Truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry Liberty;
For who loves that must first be wise and good:
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood.

by John Milton.

FREEDOM’S first champion in our fettered land!
Nor politician nor base citizen
Could gibbet thee, nor silence, nor withstand.
Thy trenchant and emancipating pen
The patriot Lincoln snatched with steady hand,
Writing his name and thine on parchment white,
’Midst war’s resistless and ensanguined flood;
Then held that proclamation high in sight
Before his fratricidal country men,—
“Freedom henceforth throughout the land for all,”—
And sealed the instrument with his own blood,
Bowing his mighty strength for slavery’s fall;
Whilst thou, stanch friend of largest liberty,
Survived,—its ruin and our peace to see.

by Amos Bronson Alcott.

Huzza, my boys! our friends the Dutch have risen,
Our good old friends, and burst the Tyrant's prison!
Aye, and have done it without bloodshed too,
Like men, to sense as well as freedom true.
The moment, I'll be sworn, that Ocean heard it,
With a new dance of waters it bestirr'd it;
And Trade, reviving from her trance of death,
Took a new lease of sunshine and of breath.
Let's aid them, my fine fellows, all we can:—
Where's finer business for an Englishman—
Who knows what 'tis to eat his own good bread,
And see his table-cloth securely spread—
Than helping to set free a neighbour's oven?
Huzza! The Dutch for ever! Orange Boven!

by James Henry Leigh Hunt.

O PEACE! and dost thou with thy presence bless
The dwellings of this war-surrounded Isle;
Soothing with placid brow our late distress,
Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?
Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail
The sweet companions that await on thee;
Complete my joy let not my first wish fail,
Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be,
With England's happiness proclaim Europa's Liberty.
O Europe! let not sceptred tyrants see
That thou must shelter in thy former state;
Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;
Give thy kings law leave not uncurbed the great ;
So with the horrors past thou'lt win thy happier fate!

by John Keats.

ONE thing we praise you for that is past praise —
The dauntless eyes that faced the rain and night,
The hand that never wearied in the fight,
Till, through the dark's despair, the dawn's delays,
It rose, that vision of forgotten days,
Ireland, a Nation in her right and might,
As fearless of the lightning as the Light, —
Freedom, the noon-tide sun that shines and stays!
O brave, O pure, O hater of the wrong,
(The wrong that is as one with England's name,
Tyranny with cant of liberty, and shame
With boast of righteousness), to you belong
Trust for the hate that blinds our foes like flame,
Love for the hope that makes our hearts so strong!

by Francis William Lauderdale Adams.

A SONNET.


Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame!
For thou wert of the mountains; they proclaim
The everlasting creed of liberty.
That creed is written on the untrampled snow,
Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold,
And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.
Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,
Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught,
And to thy brief captivity was brought
A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.
The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.

by William Cullen Bryant.

Tis not because fierce swords are flashing there,
With license and a reckless scorn of life,
When for some petty gaud upstarts a strife,
That Freedom there must harbour. Slavery's air
Breeds many a liveried satrap, prompt to dare,
And soldier-serfs are ready there and rife
To march at summons of the jerking fife.
But where swords—some—are turned to ploughshares;
where
Others, not rusted, o'er the household hearth,
In peaceful pomp, near cradled babe are hung;
And sires rest reverenced in holy earth,
And marriage-bells with holy cheer are rung,
There Freedom dwells, Constraint's sublime reward.
And Peace must rear her, e'en if War must guard.

by John Kenyon.

What freeman knoweth freedom? Never he
Whose father's father through long lives have reigned
O'er kingdoms which mere heritage attained.
Though from his youth to age he roam as free
As winds, he dreams not freedom's ecstacy.
But he whose birth was in a nation chained
For centuries; where every breath was drained
From breasts of slaves which knew not there could be
Such thing as freedom,--he beholds the light
Burst, dazzling; though the glory blind his sight
He knows the joy. Fools laugh because he reels
And weilds confusedly his infant will;
The wise man watching with a heart that feels
Says: "Cure for freedom's harms is freedom still."

by Helen Hunt Jackson.

XII. On the same.

I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs
By the known rules of antient libertie,
When strait a barbarous noise environs me
Of Owles and Cuckoes, Asses, Apes and Doggs.
As when those Hinds that were transform'd to Froggs
Raild at Latona's twin-born progenie
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
But this is got by casting Pearl to Hoggs;
That bawle for freedom in their senceless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry libertie;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they roave we see
For all this wast of wealth, and loss of blood.

by John Milton.

"Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign
On fair islands that we would command;
But clouds that are darker and denser than these
Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas
And rest on our Southern Land.

Low in dust is our Goddess of Liberty hurled
At our feet, and the time is at hand,
When we, the proud sons of the southern world,
Beneath a proud banner of freedom unfurled
And true to each other shall stand.

If e'er in the ranks of the Right we advance;
Though our enemies come like a flood,
We'll meet them like lions, aroused from our trance,
And show that a streak of the Olden Romance
Still runs in our commonplace blood.

by Henry Lawson.

SHALL we sing of Loyalty
To the far South’s fiery youth?
Yea—but let the pæan be
Of loyalty to God and Truth:
To Man, to progress, and to all
The free things, nobly free,
Of which their loved Australia shall
The golden cradle be.

Hark! her star-eyed Destinies
Pour their voices o’er the seas—
Hither, to the Land of Gold,
All who would be free!
Here a diadem behold
For immortal Liberty!
Not for Old World queens and kings,
Villain Slavery’s outworn things!

Shall we sing of Loyalty
In this new and genial Land?
Yea—but let the pæan be
Of loyalty to Love’s command,
To Thought, to Beauty, and to all
The glorious Arts that yet
In golden Australasia shall
Like chrysolites be set.

by Charles Harpur.

I.
We sate down and wept by the waters
Of Babel, and thought of the day
When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters,
Made Salem's high places his prey;
And ye, oh her desolate daughters!
Were scattered all weeping away.

II.
While sadly we gazed on the river
Which roll'd on in freedom below,
They demanded the song; but, oh never
That triumph the stranger shall know!
May this right hand be withered for ever,
Ere it string our high harp for the foe!

III.
On the willow that harp is suspended,
Oh Salem! its sound should be free;
And the hour when thy glories were ended
But left me that token of thee:
And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended
With the voice of the spoiler by me!

by George Gordon Byron.

Forget not the field where they perish'd,
The truest, the last of the brave,
All gone -- and the bright hope we cherish'd
Gone with them, and quench'd in their grave!

Oh! could we from death but recover
Those hearts as they bounded before,
In the face of high heaven to fight over
That combat for freedom once more; --

Could the chain for an instant be riven
Which Tyranny flung round us then,
No, 'tis not in Man, nor in Heaven,
To let Tyranny bind it again!

But 'tis past -- and, though blazon'd in story
The name of our Victor may be,
Accurst is the march of that glory
Which treads o'er the hearts of the free.

For dearer the grave or the prison,
Illumed by one patriot name,
Than the trophies of all who have risen
On Liberty's ruins to fame.

by Thomas Moore.

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.

by Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta.

'Hope is a slave; Despair is a freeman.'


A VAGABOND between the East and West,
Careless I greet the scourging and the rod;
I fear no terror any man may bring,
Nor any god.

The clankless chains that bound me I have rent,
No more a slave to Hope I cringe or cry;
Captives to Fate men rear their prison walls,
But free am I.

I tread where arrows press upon my path,
I smile to see the danger and the dart;
My breast is bared to meet the slings of Hate,
But not my heart.

I face the thunder and I face the rain,
I lift my head, defiance far I fling, --
My feet are set, I face the autumn as
I face the spring.

Around me on the battlefields of life,
I see men fight and fail and crouch in prayer;
Aloft I stand unfettered, for I know
The freedom of despair.

by Ellen Glasgow.

281

'Tis so appalling—it exhilarates—
So over Horror, it half Captivates—
The Soul stares after it, secure—
A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more—

To scan a Ghost, is faint—
But grappling, conquers it—
How easy, Torment, now—
Suspense kept sawing so—

The Truth, is Bald, and Cold—
But that will hold—
If any are not sure—
We show them—prayer—
But we, who know,
Stop hoping, now—

Looking at Death, is Dying—
Just let go the Breath—
And not the pillow at your Cheek
So Slumbereth—

Others, Can wrestle—
Yours, is done—
And so of Woe, bleak dreaded—come,
It sets the Fright at liberty—
And Terror's free—
Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!

by Emily Dickinson.

Now wouldst thou have a heart that tender is,
A heart that forward is to close with bliss;

A heart that will impressions freely take
Of the new covenant, and that will make

The best improvement of the word of grace,
And that to wickedness will not give place;

All this is in the promise, and it may
Obtained be of them that humbly pray.

Wouldst thou enjoy that spirit that is free,
And looseth those that in their spirits be

Oppressed with guilt, or filth, or unbelief;
That spirit that will, where it dwells, be chief;

Which breaketh Samson's cord as rotten thread,
And raiseth up the spirit that is dead;

That sets the will at liberty to choose
Those things that God hath promis'd to infuse

Into the humble heart? All this, I say,
The promise holdeth out to them that pray.

by John Bunyan.

''Let there be Liberty!' God said, and, lo!
The red skies all were luminous. The glow
Struck first Columbia's kindling mountain peaks
One hundred and eleven years ago!'

So sang a patriot whom once I saw
Descending Bunker's holy hill. With awe
I noted that he shone with sacred light,
Like Moses with the tables of the Law.

One hundred and eleven years? O small
And paltry period compared with all
The tide of centuries that flowed and ebbed
To etch Yosemite's divided wall!

Ah, Liberty, they sing you always young
Whose harps are in your adoration strung
(Each swears you are his countrywoman, too,
And speak no language but his mother tongue).

And truly, lass, although with shout and horn
Man has all-hailed you from creation's morn,
I cannot think you old-I think, indeed,
You are by twenty centuries unborn.

by Ambrose Bierce.

Thank God 'tis so! for now we know
All compromise is ended.
List Lincoln's call, then freemen, all
Who have from braves descended.

Your Stripes and Stars, ye gallant tars,
Keep proudly o'er you waving;
Strike for the right with all your might,
Stern danger freely braving!

Ye Soldier hosts, stand to your posts
Like Anderson, unflinching.
Those Southern foes need heavy blows
To cure them of their 'lynching.'

A traitor's fate may them await,
But yet their monstrous madness
May work you woe for aught ye know,
And fill the world with sadness.

Innocent blood-of this a flood
For vengeance loud is calling!
And God's light hand shall blast that land
With plagues the most appalling,

Which dares to hold from love of gold
Poor slaves in galling fetters!
Rise, East-West-North! Your might put forth,
For you are Freedom's debtors!

by Thomas Cowherd.

Like the bright lamp, that shone in Kildare's holy fane,
And burn'd through long ages of darkness and storm,
Is the heart that sorrows have frown'd on in vain,
Whose spirit outlives them, unfading and warm.
Erin, oh Erin, thus bright through the tears
Of a long night of bondage, thy spirit appears.

The nations have fallen, and thou still art young,
Thy sun is but rising, when others are set;
And though slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung,
The full noon of freedom shall beam round thee yet.
Erin, oh Erin, though long in the shade,
Thy star will shine out when the proudest shall fade.

Unchill'd by the rain, and unwaked by the wind,
The lily lies sleeping through winter's cold hour,
Till Spring's light touch her fetters unbind,
And daylight and liberty bless the young flower.
Thus Erin, oh Erin, thy winter is past,
And the hope that lived through it shall blossom at last.

by Thomas Moore.