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.