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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117547" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A True Ballad</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A glorious land is this of ours,<br>A land of liberty!<br>Through all the wide earth's bounds you ‘ll find<br>None else so truly free!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Go north or south, or east or west,<br>Wherever you may roam,<br>There's not a land like this of ours,<br>The stranger's refuge home!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And yet methinks it were but well,<br>The tale might not be told,<br>That where our banner proudliest floats,<br>Are human sinews sold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when we boast that o'er our soil<br>No tyrants footstep treads,<br>'T were well if we could hide the blood,<br>The red scourge daily sheds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet still is ours a glorious land!<br>Our shouts rise wild and high—<br>I would such tales as I have heard,<br>Might give them not the lie.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was a mournful mother, sat<br>Within the prison walls;<br>And bitterly adown her cheek<br>The scalding tear-drop falls.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She sat within the prison walls,<br>Amidst her infants three;<br>The bars were strong, the bolts well drawn,<br>She might not hope to flee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still the tears fell down her cheek,<br>And when a footstep came,<br>A shudder of convulsive fear<br>Went o'er her quivering frame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was not for the dungeon's chill,<br>Nor for the gloom it wore,<br>Nor that the pangs of conscious guilt<br>Her frighted bosom tore.—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For though in prison cell she lay,<br>In freedom's happy clime,<br>Her hand was innocent of wrong,<br>They charged her not with crime;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">T was that she wore a dusky brow,<br>She lay within that hold,<br>Until her human limbs and heart<br>Were chaffer'd off for gold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sold with her babes—all, one by one,<br>Forever torn apart—<br>And not one faint hope left to cling<br>Around her broken heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet still is ours a glorious land!<br>Raise paeans loud and high,<br>To that which fills all patriot breasts,<br>Our country's liberty.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her husband was a freeman good,<br>He lived in Maryland;<br>Where now in bootless grief he wept<br>His broken marriage band.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He loved her when they both were young<br>And though she was a slave,<br>He wedded her, and with his hand,<br>Changeless affection gave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when their prattling infants smiled,<br>Upon his cottage floor,<br>For them and her, with cheerful heart,<br>His daily toil he bore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But woe for him, and woe for her!<br>Her children all were slaves;<br>Less grief their parents’ hearts had borne,<br>To weep above their graves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For still as one by one they grew<br>To childhood's franksome years,<br>They one by one were torn away<br>To bondage and to tears.—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Torn far away to distant scenes,<br>Like green leaves from their stem;<br>And never to their home, bereaved,<br>Came tidings more of them.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now all were wrench'd apart—there was<br>No deeper grief to bear;<br>And they might calmly sit them down<br>In agonized despair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For though our land is proudly free,<br>All other lands above,<br>There's none may dare to knit again,<br>Those sacred cords of love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Margaret+Chandler">Elizabeth Margaret Chandler</a> from <i>Poetical Works</i><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117547" data-title="A True Ballad de Elizabeth Margaret Chandler" data-description="A glorious land is this of ours,/A land of liberty!/Through all the wide earth's bounds you ‘ll find/None else so truly free!/Go north or south, or east or west,/Wherever you may roam,/There's not a land like this of ours,/The stranger's refuge ..."></div>
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