What matter, I or they? 
  Mine or another’s day,
  So the right word be said
  And life the sweeter made?

  Hail to the coming singers! 
  Hail to the brave light-bringers! 
  Forward I reach and share
  All that they sing and dare.

  The airs of heaven blow o’er me;
  A glory shines before me
  Of what mankind shall be,—­
  Pure, generous, brave, and free.

  A dream of man and woman
  Diviner but still human,
  Solving the riddle old,
  Shaping the Age of Gold!

  The love of God and neighbor;
  An equal-handed labor;
  The richer life, where beauty
  Walks hand in hand with duty.

  Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
  The joy of unborn peoples! 
  Sound, trumpets far off blown,
  Your triumph is my own.

  Parcel and part of all,
  I keep the festival,
  Fore-reach the good to be,
  And share the victory.

  I feel the earth move sunward,
  I join the great march onward,
  And take, by faith, while living,
  My freehold of thanksgiving.

John Green leaf Whittier.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON

In the great Civil War in England between the Puritans and Charles the First the author of this poem sacrificed everything in the royal cause.  That cause was defeated and Lovelace was imprisoned.  In these stanzas he makes the most of his gloomy situation and sings the joys of various kinds of freedom.  First is the freedom brought by love, when his sweetheart speaks to him through the grate of the dungeon.  Second is the freedom brought by the recollection of good fellowship, when tried and true comrades took their wine straight—­“with no allaying Thames.”  Third is the freedom brought by remembrance of the king for whom he was suffering.  Finally comes the passionate and heroic assertion that though the body of a man may be confined, nevertheless his spirit can remain free and chainless.

  When Love with unconfined wings
    Hovers within my gates,
  And my divine Althea brings
    To whisper at the grates;
  When I lie tangled in her hair
    And fetter’d to her eye,
  The Gods that wanton in the air
    Know no such liberty.

  When flowing cups run swiftly round
    With no allaying Thames,
  Our careless heads with roses bound,
    Our hearts with loyal flames;
  When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
    When healths and draughts go free—­
  Fishes that tipple in the deep
    Know no such liberty.

  When (like committed linnets) I
    With shriller throat shall sing
  The sweetness, mercy, majesty
    And glories of my King;
  When I shall voice aloud how good
    He is, how great should be,
  Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
    Know no such liberty.

  Stone walls do not a prison make,
    Nor iron bars a cage;
  Minds innocent and quiet take
    That for an hermitage;
  If I have freedom in my love
    And in my soul am free,
  Angels alone, that soar above,
    Enjoy such liberty.