 | A Poetry of Exiles |  |
95
FREEDOM.
“Of old sat Freedom on the heights;”
To-day she devastates the plains;
And she who dawned with boreal lights,
At eve forked lightnings rains.
To-day she devastates the plains;
And she who dawned with boreal lights,
At eve forked lightnings rains.
Misled by wreckers, men decline
Towards their fierce primeval state,
Forgetting that by discipline
The Roman grew so great.
Towards their fierce primeval state,
Forgetting that by discipline
The Roman grew so great.
Her name hath rung in many a song
Of noblest deed and maddest crime,
Hath nerved to right and lured to wrong
In every age and clime.
Of noblest deed and maddest crime,
Hath nerved to right and lured to wrong
In every age and clime.
The Switzers raised their psalm to her
Ere they marched down, resolved to fall
Rather than brook the foreigner
Who thought their hills to thrall,
Ere they marched down, resolved to fall
Rather than brook the foreigner
Who thought their hills to thrall,
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But Petroleuses who pyred the woe
The German on their country wrought,
Who laid its last-left trophies low,
Sang her strains, too—distraught.
The German on their country wrought,
Who laid its last-left trophies low,
Sang her strains, too—distraught.
O Freedom, for six thousand years
Hailed in all Babel's scattered tongues,
Whose altars reek with blood, whose ears
Are deafened by wild lungs,
Hailed in all Babel's scattered tongues,
Whose altars reek with blood, whose ears
Are deafened by wild lungs,
Hast thou, since Earth began her moan
For Adam's freeness, in her youth,
Once had from spotless hands thine own,
Once heard the tones of truth?
For Adam's freeness, in her youth,
Once had from spotless hands thine own,
Once heard the tones of truth?
| A Poetry of Exiles | |