Freedom

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room.

Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires; My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life’s common way, In cheerful godliness.

Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty’s in every blow! Let us do or die!

Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d, and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty.

In limitations he first shows himself the master, And the law can only bring us freedom.

Of freedom and of life he only is deserving Who every day must conquer them anew. 13

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.

Give me again my hollow tree, A crust of bread, and liberty.

Lord of yourself, uncumber’d with a wife.

Of all the tyrannies on human kind The worst is that which persecutes the mind.

I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow Through Eden took their solitary way.

Freely we serve, Because we freely love, as in our will To love or not; in this we stand or fall.

But now my task is smoothly done: I can fly, or I can run.

Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav’n itself would stoop to her.