Rantoul
One day, along the electric wire
His manly word for Freedom sped;
We came next morn: that tongue of fire
Said only, 'He who spake is dead!'
Dead! while his voice was living yet,
In echoes round the pillared dome!
Dead! while his blotted page lay wet
With themes of state and loves of home!
Dead! in that crowning grace of time,
That triumph of life's zenith hour!
Dead! while we watched his manhood's prime
Break from the slow bud into flower!
Dead! he so great, and strong, and wise,
While the mean thousands yet drew breath;
How deepened, through that dread surprise,
The mystery and the awe of death!
From the high place whereon our votes
Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, fell
His first words, like the prelude notes
Of some great anthem yet to swell.
We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
Our champion waiting in his place
For the last battle of the world,
The Armageddon of the race.
Through him we hoped to speak the word
Which wins the freedom of a land;
And lift, for human right, the sword
Which dropped from Hampden's dying hand.
For he had sat at Sidney's feet,
And walked with Pym and Vane apart;
And, through the centuries, felt the beat
Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's heart.
He knew the paths the worthies held,
Where England's best and wisest trod;
And, lingering, drank the springs that welled
Beneath the touch of Milton's rod.
No wild enthusiast of the right,
Self-poised and clear, he showed alway
The coolness of his northern night,
The ripe repose of autumn's day.
His steps were slow, yet forward still
He pressed where others paused or failed;
The calm star clomb with constant will,
The restless meteor flashed and paled.
Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew
And owned the higher ends of Law;
Still rose majestic on his view
The awful Shape the schoolman saw.
Her home the heart of God; her voice
The choral harmonies whereby
The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice,
The rhythmic rule of earth and sky.
We saw his great powers misapplied
To poor ambitions; yet, through all,
We saw him take the weaker side,
And right the wronged, and free the thrall.
Now, looking o'er the frozen North,
For one like him in word and act,
To call her old, free spirit forth,
And give her faith the life of fact,--
To break her party bonds of shame,
And labor with the zeal of him
To make the Democratic name
Of Liberty the synonyme,--
We sweep the land from hill to strand,
We seek the strong, the wise, the brave,
And, sad of heart, return to stand
In silence by a new-made grave!
There, where his breezy hills of home
Look out upon his sail-white seas,
The sounds of winds and waters come,
And shape themselves to words like these.
'Why, murmuring, mourn that he, whose power
Was lent to Party over-long,
Heard the still whisper at the hour
He set his foot on Party wrong?
'The human life that closed so well
No lapse of folly now can stain
The lips whence Freedom's protest fell
No meaner thought can now profane.
'Mightier than living voice his grave
That lofty protest utters o'er;
Through roaring wind and smiting wave
It speaks his hate of wrong once more.
'Men of the North! your weak regret
Is wasted here; arise and pay
To freedom and to him your debt,
By following where he led the way!'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Related quotes
Astræa at the Capitol
WHEN first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave!
In the foul market-place I stood,
And saw the Christian mother sold,
And childhood with its locks of gold,
Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.
I shut my eyes, I held my breath,
And, smothering down the wrath and shame
That set my Northern blood aflame,
Stood silent,--where to speak was death.
Beside me gloomed the prison-cell
Where wasted one in slow decline
For uttering simple words of mine,
And loving freedom all too well.
The flag that floated from the dome
Flapped menace in the morning air;
I stood a perilled stranger where
The human broker made his home.
For crime was virtue: Gown and Sword
And Law their threefold sanction gave,
And to the quarry of the slave
Went hawking with our symbol-bird.
On the oppressor's side was power;
And yet I knew that every wrong,
However old, however strong,
But waited God's avenging hour.
I knew that truth would crush the lie,
Somehow, some time, the end would be;
Yet scarcely dared I hope to see
The triumph with my mortal eye.
But now I see it! In the sun
A free flag floats from yonder dome,
And at the nation's hearth and home
The justice long delayed is done.
Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer,
The message of deliverance comes,
But heralded by roll of drums
On waves of battle-troubled air!
Midst sounds that madden and appall,
The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew!
The harp of David melting through
The demon-agonies of Saul!
Not as we hoped; but what are we?
Above our broken dreams and plans
God lays, with wiser hand than man's,
The corner-stones of liberty.
I cavil not with Him: the voice
That freedom's blessed gospel tells
Is sweet to me as silver bells,
Rejoicing! yea, I will rejoice!
Dear friends still toiling in the sun;
Ye dearer ones who, gone before,
Are watching from the eternal shore
The slow work by your hands begun,
Rejoice with me! The chastening rod
Blossoms with love; the furnace heat
Grows cool beneath His blessed feet
Whose form is as the Son of God!
Rejoice! Our Marah's bitter springs
Are sweetened; on our ground of grief
Rise day by day in strong relief
The prophecies of better things.
Rejoice in hope! The day and night
Are one with God, and one with them
Who see by faith the cloudy hem
Of Judgement fringed with Mercy's light
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Abolition Of Slavery In The District Of Columbia, 1862
When first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave!
In the foul market-place I stood,
And saw the Christian mother sold,
And childhood with its locks of gold,
Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.
I shut my eyes, I held my breath,
And, smothering down the wrath and shame
That set my Northern blood aflame,
Stood silent, where to speak was death.
Beside me gloomed the prison-cell
Where wasted one in slow decline
For uttering simple words of mine,
And loving freedom all too well.
The flag that floated from the dome
Flapped menace in the morning air;
I stood a perilled stranger where
The human broker made his home.
For crime was virtue: Gown and Sword
And Law their threefold sanction gave,
And to the quarry of the slave
Went hawking with our symbol-bird.
On the oppressor's side was power;
And yet I knew that every wrong,
However old, however strong,
But waited God's avenging hour.
I knew that truth would crush the lie,
Somehow, some time, the end would be;
Yet scarcely dared I hope to see
The triumph with my mortal eye.
But now I see it! In the sun
A free flag floats from yonder dome,
And at the nation's hearth and home
The justice long delayed is done.
Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer,
The message of deliverance comes,
But heralded by roll of drums
On waves of battle-troubled air!
Midst sounds that madden and appall,
The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew !
The harp of David melting through
The demon-agonies of Saul!
Not as we hoped; but what are we?
Above our broken dreams and plans
God lays, with wiser hand than man's,
The corner-stones of liberty.
I cavil not with Him: the voice
That freedom's blessed gospel tells
Is sweet to me as silver bells,
Rejoicing! yea, I will rejoice!
Dear friends still toiling in the sun;
Ye dearer ones who, gone before,
Are watching from the eternal shore
The slow work by your hands begun,
Rejoice with me! The chastening rod
Blossoms with love; the furnace heat
Grows cool beneath His blessed feet
Whose form is as the Son of God!
Rejoice! Our Marah's bitter springs
Are sweetened; on our ground of grief
Rise day by day in strong relief
The prophecies of better things.
Rejoice in hope! The day and night
Are one with God, and one with them
Who see by faith the cloudy hem
Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Land of the Free (c) 3-29-08
Land of the Free home of the brave
Land of disease home of the slave
Freedom of religion Freedom of speech
Freedom of press and freedom to breach
Freedom to steal freedom to take
Freedom to carry guns and Freedom to break
The laws of the man and the laws of the word
Freedom from peace but to still use the bird
The only home of brave and Land of the Free
The land who rules based off democracy
Freedom to starve and Freedom to be poor
Freedom to break and enter someone’s door
Freedom to lay off workers and close off jobs
Freedom to take what they want and to rob
Freedom of abortion Freedom of extortion
Freedom to own land and give everyone their portion
Freedom for action by any means necessary
But what their picture of that can really be scary
Freedom to wage war without our consent for our hours to be spent
Freedom to take our money then make us pay rent
Land of the prospering riches and of those who don’t care for the
People who live in the FREE old America
Copyright 3-29-08 ©® Corey Threet
PLEASE COMMENT!
poem by Corey Threet
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The Dead Singer
'SHE is dead!' they say; 'she is robed for the grave; O there are lilies upon her breast;
Her mother has kissed her clay-cold lips, and folded her hands to rest;
Her blue eyes show through the waxen lids: they have hidden her hair's gold crown;
Her grave is dug, and its heap of earth is waiting to press her down.'
'She is dead!' they say to the people, her people, for whom she sung;
Whose hearts she touched with sorrow and love, like a harp with life-chords strung.
And the people hear—but behind their tear they smile as though they heard
Another voice, like a mystery, proclaim another word.
'She is not dead.' it says to their hearts; 'true Singers can never die;
Their life is a voice of higher things, unseen to the common eye;
The truths and the beauties are clear to them, God's right and the human wrong,
The heroes who die unknown, and the weak who are chained and scourged by the strong.'
And the people smile at the death-word, for the mystic voice is clear:
'THE SINGER WHO LIVED IS ALWAYS ALIVE: WE HEARKEN AND ALWAYS HEAR!'
And they raise her body with tender hands, and bear her down to the main,
They lay her in state on the mourning ship, like the lily-maid Elaine;
And they sail to her isle across the sea, where the people wait on the shore
To lift her in silence with heads all bare to her home forevermore,
Her home in the heart of her country; oh, a grave among our own
Is warmer and dearer than living on in the stranger lands alone.
No need of a tomb for the Singer! Her fair hair's pillow now
Is the sacred clay of her country, and the sky above her brow
Is the same that smiled and wept on her youth, and the grass around is deep
With the clinging leaves of the shamrock that cover her peaceful sleep.
Undreaming there she will rest and wait, in the tomb her people make,
Till she hears men's hearts, like the seeds in Spring, all stirring to be awake,
Till she feels the moving of souls that strain till the bands around them break;
And then, I think, her dead lips will smile and her eyes be oped to see,
When the cry goes out to the Nations that the Singer's land is free!
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Rendition
I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call,
I saw an earnest look beseech,
And rather by that look than speech
My neighbor told me all.
And, as I thought of Liberty
Marched handcuffed down that sworded street,
The solid earth beneath my feet
Reeled fluid as the sea.
I felt a sense of bitter loss, —
Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath,
And loathing fear, as if my path
A serpent stretched across.
All love of home, all pride of place,
All generous confidence and trust,
Sank smothering in that deep disgust
And anguish of disgrace.
Down on my native hills of June,
And home's green quiet, hiding all,
Fell sudden darkness like the fall
Of midnight upon noon!
And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,
Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God
The blasphemy of wrong.
'O Mother, from thy memories proud,
Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth,
Lend this dead air a breeze of health,
And smite with stars this cloud.
'Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,
Rise awful in thy strength,' I said;
Ah me! I spake but to the dead;
I stood upon her grave!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Written-In-Red
(To Our Living Dead in Mexico's Struggle)
Written in red their protest stands,
For the gods of the World to see;
On the dooming wall their bodiless hands
have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands
Illumine the message: "Seize the lands!
Open the prisons and make men free!"
Flame out the living words of the dead
Written-in-red.
Gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb!
Your guns have spoken and they are dust.
But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb,
have felt the beat of a wakening drum
Within them sounding-the Dead men's tongue—
Calling: "Smite off the ancient rust!"
Have beheld "Resurrexit," the word of the Dead,
Written-in-red.
Bear it aloft, O roaring, flame!
Skyward aloft, where all may see.
Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same;
One is the immemorial shame;
One is the struggle, and in One name—
MANHOOD— we battle to set men free.
"Uncurse us the Land!" burn the words of the Dead,
Written-in-red.
poem by Voltairine de Cleyre
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Summons
MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,
Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
To silence now?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name, let us speak while there is time!
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
Silence is crime!
What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,
God and our charter?
Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,
Here the false jurist human rights deny,
And in the church, their proud and skilled abettors.
Make truth a lie?
Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God?
Shall our New England stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger
Day after day?
Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky;
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billows' motion
Round rock and cliff;
From the free fireside of her unbought farmer;
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;
From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,
Rings the red steel;
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
A People's voice.
Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Within her grave.
Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth!
Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!
Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,
Maintain the right!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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One Of The Signers
O storied vale of Merrimac
Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
And from his century's sleep call back
A brave and honored son of thine.
Unveil his effigy between
The living and the dead to-day;
The fathers of the Old Thirteen
Shall witness bear as spirits may.
Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers
The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
Wise Franklin reverend with his years
And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!
Be thine henceforth a pride of place
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
Where scarce a stone is left to trace
The Holy House of Amesbury.
A prouder memory lingers round
The birthplace of thy true man here
Than that which haunts the refuge found
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.
The plain deal table where he sat
And signed a nation's title-deed
Is dearer now to fame than that
Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.
Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,
Shall ring the Independence bells,
Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
The lesson which his image tells.
For in that hour of Destiny,
Which tried the men of bravest stock,
He knew the end alone must be
A free land or a traitor's block.
Among those picked and chosen men
Than his, who here first drew his breath,
No firmer fingers held the pen
Which wrote for liberty or death.
Not for their hearths and homes alone,
But for the world their work was done;
On all the winds their thought has flown
Through all the circuit of the sun.
We trace its flight by broken chains,
By songs of grateful Labor still;
To-day, in all her holy fanes,
It rings the bells of freed Brazil.
O hills that watched his boyhood's home,
O earth and air that nursed him, give,
In this memorial semblance, room
To him who shall its bronze outlive!
And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice
That in the countless years to come,
Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Burial of Barber
BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;
Never over one more brave
Shall the prairie grasses weep,
In the ages yet to come,
When the millions in our room,
What we sow in tears, shall reap.
Bear him up the icy hill,
With the Kansas, frozen still
As his noble heart, below,
And the land he came to till
With a freeman's thews and will,
And his poor hut roofed with snow!
One more look of that dead face,
Of his murder's ghastly trace!
One more kiss, O widowed one!
Lay your left hands on his brow,
Lift you right hands up and vow
That his work shall yet be done.
Patience, friends! The eye of God
Every path by Murder trod
Watches, lidless, day and night;
And the dead man in his shroud,
And his widow weeping loud,
And our hearts, are in his sight.
Every deadly threat that swells
With the roar of gambling hells,
Every brutal jest and jeer,
Every wicked thought and plan
Of the cruel heart of man,
Though but whispered, He can hear!
We in suffering, they in crime,
Wait the just award of time,
Wait the vengeance that is due;
Not in vain a heart shall break,
Not a tear for Freedom's sake
Fall unheeded: God is true.
While the flag with stars bedecked
Threatens where it should protect,
And the Law shakes hands with Crime,
What is left us but to wait,
Match our patience to our fate,
And abide the better time?
Patience, friends! The human heart
Everywhere shall take our part,
Everywhere for us shall pray;
On our side are nature's laws,
And God's life is in the cause
That we suffer for to-day.
Well to suffer is divine;
Pass the watchword down the line,
Pass the countersign: 'Endure.'
Not to him who rashly dares,
But to him who nobly bears,
Is the victor's garland sure.
Frozen earth to frozen breast,
Lay our slain one down to rest;
Lay him down in hope and faith,
And above the broken sod,
Once again, to Freedom's God,
Pledge ourselves for life or death,
That the State whose walls we lay,
In our blood and tears, to-day,
Shall be free from bonds of shame,
And our goodly land untrod
By the feet of Slavery, shod
With cursing as with flame!
Plant the Buckeye on his grave,
For the hunter of the slave
In its shadow cannot rest;
And let martyr mound and tree
Be our pledge and guaranty
Of the freedom of the West!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Theirs
I.
Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act
A history stranger than his written fact,
Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom
Of that great hour when throne and altar fell
With long death-groan which still is audible.
He, when around the walls of Paris rung
The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom,
And every ill which follows unblest war
Maddened all France from Finistere to Var,
The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung,
And guided Freedom in the path he saw
Lead out of chaos into light and law,
Peace, not imperial, but republican,
And order pledged to all the Rights of Man.
II.
Death called him from a need as imminent
As that from which the Silent William went
When powers of evil, like the smiting seas
On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties.
Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung
The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung
For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will,
Above his bier the hearts of men stood still.
Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn
Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn,
The old voice filled the air! His last brave word
Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred.
Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought,
As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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To The Reformers Of England
GOD bless ye, brothers! in the fight
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,
For better is your sense of right
Than king-craft's triple mail.
Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,
More mighty is your simplest word;
The free heart of an honest man
Than crosier or the sword.
Go, let your blinded Church rehearse
The lesson it has learned so well;
It moves not with its prayer or curse
The gates of heaven or hell.
Let the State scaffold rise again;
Did Freedom die when Russell died?
Forget ye how the blood of Vane
From earth's green bosom cried?
The great hearts of your olden time
Are beating with you, full and strong;
All holy memories and sublime
And glorious round ye throng.
The bluff, bold men of Runnymede
Are with ye still in times like these;
The shades of England's mighty dead,
Your cloud of witnesses!
The truths ye urge are borne abroad
By every wind and every tide;
The voice of Nature and of God
Speaks out upon your side.
The weapons which your hands have found
Are those which Heaven itself has wrought,
Light, Truth, and Love; your battle-ground
The free, broad field of Thought.
No partial, selfish purpose breaks
The simple beauty of your plan,
Nor lie from throne or altar shakes
Your steady faith in man.
The languid pulse of England starts
And bounds beneath your words of power,
The beating of her million hearts
Is with you at this hour!
O ye who, with undoubting eyes,
Through present cloud and gathering storm,
Behold the span of Freedom's skies,
And sunshine soft and warm;
Press bravely onward! not in vain
Your generous trust in human-kind;
The good which bloodshed could not gain
Your peaceful zeal shall find.
Press on! the triumph shall be won
Of common rights and equal laws,
The glorious dream of Harrington,
And Sidney's good old cause.
Blessing the cotter and the crown,
Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup;
And, plucking not the highest down,
Lifting the lowest up.
Press on! and we who may not share
The toil or glory of your fight
May ask, at least, in earnest prayer,
God's blessing on the right!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Vain Spell
THE house sleeps dark and the moon wakes white,
The fields are alight with dew;
'Oh, will you not come to me, Love, to-night?
I have waited the whole night through,
For I knew,
O Heart of my heart, I knew by my heart,
That the night of all nights is this,
When elm shall crack and lead shall part,
When moulds shall sunder and shot bolts start
To let you through to my kiss.'
So spake she alone in the lonely house.
She had wrapped her round with the spell,
She called the call, she vowed the vow,
And the heart she had pledged knew well
That this was the night, the only night,
When the moulds might be wrenched apart,
When the living and dead, in the dead of the night,
Might clasp once more, in the grave's despite,
For the price of a living heart.
But out in the grave the corpse lay white
And the grave clothes were wet with dew;
'Oh, will you not come to me, Love, to-night,
I have waited the whole night through,
For I knew
That I dared not leave my grave for an hour
Since the hour of all hours is near,
When you shall come to the hollow bower,
In a cast of the wind, in a waft of the Power,
To the heart that to-night beats here!'
The moon grows pale and the house sleeps still
Ah, God! do the dead forget?
The grave is white and the bed is chill,
But a guest may be coming yet.
But the hour has come and the hour has gone
That never will come again;
Love's only chance is over and done,
And the quick and the dead are twain, not one,
And the price has been paid in vain.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Freed Islands
A FEW brief years have passed away
Since Britain drove her million slaves
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray:
God willed their freedom; and to-day
Life blooms above those island graves!
He spoke! across the Carib Sea,
We heard the clash of breaking chains,
And felt the heart-throb of the free,
The first, strong pulse of liberty
Which thrilled along the bondman's veins.
Though long delayed, and far, and slow,
The Briton's triumph shall be ours:
Wears slavery here a prouder brow
Than that which twelve short years ago
Scowled darkly from her island bowers?
Mighty alike for good or ill
With mother-land, we fully share
The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel,
The tireless energy of will,
The power to do, the pride to dare.
What she has done can we not do?
Our hour and men are both at hand;
The blast which Freedom's angel blew
O'er her green islands, echoes through
Each valley of our forest land.
Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn
The death of slavery. When it falls,
Look to your vassals in their turn,
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,
Your prisons and your palace walls!
O kingly mockers! scoffing show
What deeds in Freedom's name we do;
Yet know that every taunt ye throw
Across the waters, goads our slow
Progression towards the right and true.
Not always shall your outraged poor,
Appalled by democratic crime,
Grind as their fathers ground before;
The hour which sees our prison door
Swing wide shall be their triumph time.
On then, my brothers! every blow
Ye deal is felt the wide earth through;
Whatever here uplifts the low
Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe,
Blesses the Old World through the New.
Take heart! The promised hour draws near;
I hear the downward beat of wings,
And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear:
'Joy to the people! woe and fear
To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Haunted
What are these nameless mysteries,
These subtleties of life and death,
That bring before our spirit eyes
The loved and lost; or, like a breath
Of lightest air, will touch the cheek,
And yet a wordless language speak?
In every breeze that blows, to-day,
One voice seems speaking unto me;
And north or south, whichever way
I turn my gaze, one face I see,
And closely, closely at my side
A mystic shadow seems to glide.
A motley crowd we move among,
We surge on with the mighty mass,
And yet no one in all the throng
Looks strangely on us as we pass.
No eye but mine own seems to see
The nameless thing that walks by me.
I cannot touch a proffered hand
But this strange shadow glides between.
Why came he from the spirit land?
What brought him from the world unseen?
Why am I troubled and oppressed
By the vague presence of my guest?
He was my friend! I should rejoice!
I loved him once! Why do I fear?
And yet I shudder as his voice
Speaks in the wind. I feel him near,
This restless spirit of the dead,
And shiver with a nameless dread.
I loved him once; he was my friend;
He held the first place in my heart,
And might have held it to the end.
But our two ways spread wide apart:
I kept the path upon the hill,
And he went down and down, until
He reached the depths of sin and shame,
And died as sots and drunkards die.
I ceased to even speak his name.
God knows I never thought that I,
Who blamed his lack of moral strength,
Might answer for his fall, at length!
O restless dead, lost friend of mine!
I might have saved you, had I tried.
I saw you lift the glass of wine,
And, seeing, had I warned you, cried,
'Touch not, taste not the drink accursed!'
I might have saved you from the thirst
That swallowed up your brain and soul.
But nay! I scorned you when you fell,
And, looking upward to my goal,
Left you to stagger down to hell.
Accusing spirit of the dead,
Your presence fills my heart with dread!
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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To Massachusetts
WHAT though around thee blazes
No fiery rallying sign?
From all thy own high places,
Give heaven the light of thine!
What though unthrilled, unmoving,
The statesman stand apart,
And comes no warm approving
From Mammon's crowded mart?
Still, let the land be shaken
By a summons of thine own!
By all save truth forsaken,
Stand fast with that alone!
Shrink not from strife unequal!
With the best is always hope;
And ever in the sequel
God holds the right side up!
But when, with thine uniting,
Come voices long and loud,
And far-off hills are writing
Thy fire-words on the cloud;
When from Penobscot's fountains
A deep response is heard,
And across the Western mountains
Rolls back thy rallying word;
Shall thy line of battle falter,
With its allies just in view?
Oh, by hearth and holy altar,
My fatherland, be true!
Fling abroad thy scrolls of freedom!
Speed them onward far and fast!
Over hill and valley speed them,
Like the sibyl's on the blast!
Lo! The Empire State is shaking
The shackles from her hand;
With the rugged North is waking
The level sunset land!
On they come, the free battalions!
East and West and North they come,
And the heart-beat of the millions
Is the beat of Freedom's drum.
'To the tyrant's plot no favor!
No heed to place-fed knaves!
Bar and bolt the door forever
Against the land of slaves!'
Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,
The heavens above us spread!
The land is roused, — its spirit
Was sleeping, but not dead!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Voice Of New England
UP the hillside, down the glen,
Rouse the sleeping citizen;
Summon out the might of men!
Like a lion growling low,
Like a night-storm rising slow,
Like the tread of unseen foe;
It is coming, it is nigh!
Stand your homes and altars by;
On your own free thresholds die.
Clang the bells in all your spires;
On the gray hills of your sires
Fling to heaven your signal-fires.
From Wachuset, lone and bleak,
Unto Berkshire's tallest peak,
Let the flame-tougued heralds speak.
Oh, for God and duty stand,
Heart to heart and hand to hand,
Round the old graves of the land.
Whoso shrinks or falters now,
Whoso to the yoke would bow,
Brand the craven on his brow!
Freedom's soil hath only place
For a free and fearless race,
None for traitors false and base.
Perish party, perish clan;
Strike together while ye can,
Like the arm of one strong man.
Like that angel's voice sublime,
Heard above a world of crime,
Crying of the end of time;
With one heart and with one mouth,
Let the North unto the South
Speak the word befitting both:
'What though Issachar be strong!
Ye may load his back with wrong
Overmuch and over long:
'Patience with her cup o'errun,
With her weary thread outspun,
Murmurs that her work is done.
'Make our Union-bond a chain,
Weak as tow in Freedom's strain
Link by link shall snap in twain.
'Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope
Bind the starry cluster up,
Shattered over heaven's blue cope!
'Give us bright though broken rays,
Rather than eternal haze,
Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze.
'Take your land of sun and bloom;
Only leave to Freedom room
For her plough, and forge, and loom;
'Take your slavery-blackened vales;
Leave us but our own free gales,
Blowing on our thousand sails.
'Boldly, or with treacherous art,
Strike the blood-wrought chain apart;
Break the Union's mighty heart;
'Work the ruin, if ye will;
Pluck upon your heads an ill
Which shall grow and deepen still.
'With your bondman's right arm bare,
With his heart of black despair,
Stand alone, if stand ye dare!
'Onward with your fell design;
Dig the gulf and draw the line:
Fire beneath your feet the mine:
'Deeply, when the wide abyss
Yawns between your land and this,
Shall ye feel your helplessness.
'By the hearth, and in the bed,
Shaken by a look or tread,
Ye shall own a guilty dread.
'And the curse of unpaid toil,
Downward through your generous soil
Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
'Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,
VInes our rocks shall overgrow,
Plenty in our valleys flow; —
'And when vengeance clouds your skies,
Hither shall ye turn your eyes,
As the lost on Paradise!
'We but ask our rocky strand,
Freedom's true and brother band,
Freedom's strong and honest hand;
'Valleys by the slave untrod,
And the Pilgrim's mountain sod,
Blessed of our fathers' God!'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Mr. B's Ballroom
A victim of collision on the open sea
Nobody ever said that life was free
Sank, swam, go down with the ship
But use your freedom of choice
I'll say it again in the land of the free
Use your freedom of choice
Your freedom of choice
In ancient rome there was a poem
About a dog who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom of choice!
Then if you got it you don't want it
Seems to be the rule of thumb
Don't be tricked by what you see
You got two ways to go
I'll say it again in the land of the free
Use your freedom of choice
Freedom of choice
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom of choice!
In ancient rome
There was a poem
About a dog
Who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want
(repeat)
song performed by by Devo
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Freedom's Battle-Song
RED, white, blue, the flag that leads us on,
Stripes as red as blood well shed by many a hero gone.
Now 'tis ours to storm the towers of tyranny and wrong,
Freedom's sons who front the guns with Freedom's battle-song.
Fly the flag from dome and steeple,
Fly the flag from home and school,
Flag of Freedom's birth,
While we battle that the rule
Of the people
By the people
For the people
Shall prevail o'er all the earth.
Red, white, blue, the flag that leads us on,
White as peace for whose release our fighting gear we don;
Peace enchained, crushed, profaned, shall yet in beauty stand,
Yet shall bless with fruitfulness her desolated land.
Fly the flag from dome and steeple,
Fly the flag from home and school,
Flag of Freedom's birth
While we battle that the rule
Of the people
By the people
For the people
Shall prevail o'er all the earth.
Red, white, blue, the flag that leads us on,
Blue as skies whose starry eyes shall see our victory won.
Freedom's sons and champions, to her our hearts are true,
We who fight for Human Right, and the Red,
White, Blue.
Fly the flag from dome and steeple,
Fly, the flag from home and school,
Flag of Freedom's birth,
While we battle that the rule
Of the people
By the people
For the people
Shall prevail o'er all the earth.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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My heart yearns for freedom
Free my heart from the chains of my unfulfilled life
My life of living with no zeal for life
My life of living with a dead soul and a distorted mind
My life of breathing with no air to my lungs
Living life with no purpose is like living no life
Going with the flow of life with your heart resisting
Is like plunging in a burning fire with your eyes opened
I’m crying out loud to you the energies of the universe
With the hope that you’ll notice the sound I make
And that you will comprehend the motive behind my cry
I urge to be freed from the unhappiness that prevails within
My heart yearns to be freed from the suppression of its strength
From being denied its power of self-expression and actualisation
My soul cries for freedom to project its actual image to the outside
It demands that the chains be destroyed to allow it the well deserved freedom
Feed my hungry heart with its energy and its food for the soul
Invite life to my heart by granting it an opportunity to be itself
Activate my heart by releasing it from its chains of freedom
These chains comprise my insecurities and my fears
Untying the chains will loosen up these negative forces
Destroying these chains will destroy these enemies of my success
And will give me freedom that I desperately long for
Freedom to my heart is freedom to my being
Allowing my heart some freedom is giving life to my soul
Allowing my heart some freedom is granting me my true life
Give my heart its freedom and breathe air into my lungs.
poem by Tsholofelo Mooketsi
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Vain Death
ALL the first night she might not weep
But watched till morning came,
And when she slept at dawn, she heard
The dead man call her name.
The second night she watched and wept
And called on death for grace,
And when she slept before the dawn
She saw the dead man’s face.
The third night through she laughed as one
That knows her way to bliss,
And in the instant ere she slept
She felt the dead man’s kiss.
She rose and faced the flickering fire
(And oh, but she was fair!),
Like a wild witch behind her danced
The shadow of her hair.
She took her penknife from its sheath,
The tender blade she kissed,
And by the firelight’s dying leap
She bared her little wrist.
And where the vein ran large and blue
She cut, once and again,
Yet ere she swooned from life, she knew
Her death had been in vain.
For while life thundered in her ears,
Ere yet her pulse might fail,
Far off across the kindless night
She heard the dead man’s wail,
And knew her doom was one with theirs
That kill the life God gave,
And that she might not leave this earth
Her soul alive to save,
But ay must dwell within that house
As in a living grave,
While he for whom she died might ne’er
Win to her in that place,
But must for ever make his moan
Ranging in agony alone
The trackless void of space
poem by Archibald Thomas Strong
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