For sea and land don't understand, Nor skies without a frown See rights for which the one hand fights Be just at home; then write your scroll And bid the broad Atlantic roll A ferry of the free. And, henceforth, there shall be no chain, Save underneath the sea The wires shall murmur through the main The conscious stars accord above, The waters wild below, And under, through the cable wove, Her fiery errands go. For He that worketh high and wise, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man. VOLUNTARIES. I. Low and mournful be the strain, What his fault, or what his crime? His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, 'Pang for pang your seed shall pay, II. FREEDOM all winged expands, 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; She will not refuse to dwell Where palms plume, siroccos blaze, Hid from men of Northern brain, Far beholding, without cloud, What these with slowest steps attain. For freedom he will strike and strive, III. In an age of fops and toys, 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. O, WELL for the fortunate soul Of sorrows new and old! Yet happier he whose inward sight, Stayed on his subtile thought, But best befriended of the God 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, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Cannon in front and leaden rain, Him Duty through the clarion calling To the van called not in vain. 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, Victor over death and pain; |