Freedom all winged expands,
Nor perches in a narrow place,
Her broad van seeks unplanted
lands,
She loves a poor and virtuous
race.
Clinging to the colder zone
Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake
down,
The snow-flake is her banner’s
star,
Her stripes the boreal streamers
are.
Long she loved the Northman
well;
Now the iron age is done,
She will not refuse to dwell
With the offspring of the
Sun
Foundling of the desert far,
Where palms plume and siroccos
blaze,
He roves unhurt the burning
ways
In climates of the summer
star.
He has avenues to God
Hid from men of northern brain,
Far beholding, without cloud,
What these with slowest steps
attain.
If once the generous chief
arrive
To lead him willing to be
led,
For freedom he will strike
and strive,
And drain his heart till he
be dead.
III.
In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom’s
fight,—
Break sharply off their jolly
games,
Forsake; their comrades gay,
And quit proud homes and youthful
dames,
For famine, toil, and fray?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace
divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our
dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou
must,
The youth replies, I can.
IV.
Oh, well for the fortunate
soul
Which Music’s wings
infold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old!
Yet happier he whose inward
sight,
Stayed on his subtile thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of
time,
To vacant bosoms brought.
But best befriended of the
God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and
the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Feeling only the fiery thread
Leading over heroic ground,
Walled with mortal terror
round,
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed
secures.
Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this,—and
knows no more,—
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before,—
And he who battles on her
side,
—God—though
he were ten times slain—
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain;
Forever: but his erring
foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying
low,
And sees aloft the red right
arm
Redress the eternal scales.
He, the poor foe, whom angels
foil,
Blind with pride, and fooled
by hate,
Writhes within the dragon
coil,
Reserved to a speechless fate.