Freedom

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one’s going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core… I know why the caged bird sings! 1

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

What stands if Freedom fall? Who dies if England live?

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone. 1

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the heaven above And the road below me.

No Rack can torture me— My Soul—at Liberty— Behind this mortal Bone There knits a bolder One—

Except Thyself may be Thine Enemy— Captivity is Consciousness— So’s Liberty.

The poet is like the prince of the clouds Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer; Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers, His giant wings prevent him from walking. 1

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak.

They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak.

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.

No fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon our land!

Today unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home; Thou art not my friend and I’m not thine.

To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven.

Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Spirit of Night!

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.