ON THE PRESENT CRISIS
My country! never to that hallowed name
My soul refused the tribute of deep love;
Though not to thee the Academic grove,
Nor on thy hills the temples, nor the fame
Of haunted spring and grot, and hill-tops blest
With feet of wandering god or angel-guest,
That with high memories fed devotion's flame
To steadfast brightness in the Locrians' breast;
Though not to thee the lyre
That with the theft of sweet and potent strains
From heaven for a nation gains
Promethean fire,
And makes a people conscious of itself; —
Though thee, I saw, no eagle that in flight
Looks with fixed eye against the arrowy light,
But like a Gryphon over glittering pelf,
Against the Arimaspian set; —
Saw vaunted freedom stalk in chains,
And bondsmen toiling on the plains
With freemen's life-blood wet, —
Yet, O my country, on whose wooded hills
The earth first gave its beauty to my eye,
My ear first heard the music of its rills,
My soul received the vision of the sky, —
Thy blue and wood-embosomed lakes
In which the sky and headlands sleep,
The river's avalanche that breaks,
Far-thundering, from the steep,
Thy thousand " headlong streams " which pour
Stern and solemn strains, that make
Our inland valley's ocean-roar, —
The earth's perpetual thunder bland, —
A sound, as from its craggy caverns deep,
Forever to its children spake
The voices of the Father land; —
The woods where oft my feet have strayed,
Dim forests vast with memories haunted
Of old heroic tribes that chaunted
Their death songs in the shade, —
My boyhood's memories of the past,
That more exalted than a blast
Of trumpets from a pageant gay
Of marching men, — the ancient day,
The pilgrims in the wood and glen,
The Council speech, the midnight fray,
The death-yells of the dark red men, —
The time when men for Freedom spoke
Great words like thunder, and like lightning broke
Their deeds refulgent, — Oh my native land!
For these I loved thee, nor too closely scanned
Thy deeds, nor with suspicious eye;
And reddened more with pride than shame
To hear the injurious scoffs that came
From the lie-faltering lips of tyranny; —
And soon I said for sacred truths avowed,
And ancient oaths to freedom sworn aloud,
Soon from her shameful sleep awaking,
Regifted with her early strength divine,
They shall behold her each link'd fetter breaking
Like fire-touched flax, or threads of silken twine: —
As when a giant for a moment bowed
To earth by sleep, or by the might
Of god-controlling wine,
While scoffs around the base, detracting crowd,
Instant, among them, at his perfect height,
Stands godlike-fair and terrible in sight.
For still I deemed thee guiltless in intent,
Though oft my soul for violated law,
And needless favor to oppression lent,
Mourned silently — nor less for the dark tribes
From their old graves and shattered forests sent —
Yet ever against foreign tyrants saw
Thy threatening bow in Pythian anger bent;
But when I saw thee drink the cup of bribes,
And drain the poisoned draught with eager lips,
Proffered by lustful slaves of power and gain —
Then first I saw thy brightness in eclipse,
Then first my heart like death pangs felt its pain!
With quickened ear my boding spirit then
Heard the deep wailing of unnumbered men —
A groan — as from their graves in all the earth
Who fell for freedom, and a low
Deep utterance of Nature for the woe,
The unrepented wrongs, without relief,
Of them, who for their sorrows, from their birth
She habits in the sable hue of grief.
Then long my spirit, hushed within the lair
Of silence, listened for a voice to speak,
And with that Ancient Word of truth and might
Make a deep thunder of the noiseless air:
From grey New-England's hill-tops bleak,
Where in the furrow, hastening to the fight,
The plumeless hero left the plough and steer —
From the free spirit of the mountaineer,
From green Vermont, from Holyoke's wintry peak,
Listened my soul the mighty voice to hear; —
Until — for Freedom — with the pain
Of that deep silence anguished long,
Fired to the utterance of her strain,
I seized my harp and poured the impetuous song:
Sons of the Sons of Might!
Who sleep beneath the soil,
Who fell for Freedom in the fight —
For Freedom lived to toil —
Speak Brothers! shall a race of slaves
Leave our foot prints on their graves?
Shall we whose souls unawed and free
Upon our bleak and storm swept hills
With pathless winds, by winding rills,
From youth have walked with Liberty,
Here in her birth-place, in the wintry North,
Crouch, and speak with stinted breath
The name for which our fathers bled?
Freedom! Ho, shout it to the mountains forth!
Speak Freemen! though to speak were death,
Speak! or you shame the dead.
My country! never to that hallowed name
My soul refused the tribute of deep love;
Though not to thee the Academic grove,
Nor on thy hills the temples, nor the fame
Of haunted spring and grot, and hill-tops blest
With feet of wandering god or angel-guest,
That with high memories fed devotion's flame
To steadfast brightness in the Locrians' breast;
Though not to thee the lyre
That with the theft of sweet and potent strains
From heaven for a nation gains
Promethean fire,
And makes a people conscious of itself; —
Though thee, I saw, no eagle that in flight
Looks with fixed eye against the arrowy light,
But like a Gryphon over glittering pelf,
Against the Arimaspian set; —
Saw vaunted freedom stalk in chains,
And bondsmen toiling on the plains
With freemen's life-blood wet, —
Yet, O my country, on whose wooded hills
The earth first gave its beauty to my eye,
My ear first heard the music of its rills,
My soul received the vision of the sky, —
Thy blue and wood-embosomed lakes
In which the sky and headlands sleep,
The river's avalanche that breaks,
Far-thundering, from the steep,
Thy thousand " headlong streams " which pour
Stern and solemn strains, that make
Our inland valley's ocean-roar, —
The earth's perpetual thunder bland, —
A sound, as from its craggy caverns deep,
Forever to its children spake
The voices of the Father land; —
The woods where oft my feet have strayed,
Dim forests vast with memories haunted
Of old heroic tribes that chaunted
Their death songs in the shade, —
My boyhood's memories of the past,
That more exalted than a blast
Of trumpets from a pageant gay
Of marching men, — the ancient day,
The pilgrims in the wood and glen,
The Council speech, the midnight fray,
The death-yells of the dark red men, —
The time when men for Freedom spoke
Great words like thunder, and like lightning broke
Their deeds refulgent, — Oh my native land!
For these I loved thee, nor too closely scanned
Thy deeds, nor with suspicious eye;
And reddened more with pride than shame
To hear the injurious scoffs that came
From the lie-faltering lips of tyranny; —
And soon I said for sacred truths avowed,
And ancient oaths to freedom sworn aloud,
Soon from her shameful sleep awaking,
Regifted with her early strength divine,
They shall behold her each link'd fetter breaking
Like fire-touched flax, or threads of silken twine: —
As when a giant for a moment bowed
To earth by sleep, or by the might
Of god-controlling wine,
While scoffs around the base, detracting crowd,
Instant, among them, at his perfect height,
Stands godlike-fair and terrible in sight.
For still I deemed thee guiltless in intent,
Though oft my soul for violated law,
And needless favor to oppression lent,
Mourned silently — nor less for the dark tribes
From their old graves and shattered forests sent —
Yet ever against foreign tyrants saw
Thy threatening bow in Pythian anger bent;
But when I saw thee drink the cup of bribes,
And drain the poisoned draught with eager lips,
Proffered by lustful slaves of power and gain —
Then first I saw thy brightness in eclipse,
Then first my heart like death pangs felt its pain!
With quickened ear my boding spirit then
Heard the deep wailing of unnumbered men —
A groan — as from their graves in all the earth
Who fell for freedom, and a low
Deep utterance of Nature for the woe,
The unrepented wrongs, without relief,
Of them, who for their sorrows, from their birth
She habits in the sable hue of grief.
Then long my spirit, hushed within the lair
Of silence, listened for a voice to speak,
And with that Ancient Word of truth and might
Make a deep thunder of the noiseless air:
From grey New-England's hill-tops bleak,
Where in the furrow, hastening to the fight,
The plumeless hero left the plough and steer —
From the free spirit of the mountaineer,
From green Vermont, from Holyoke's wintry peak,
Listened my soul the mighty voice to hear; —
Until — for Freedom — with the pain
Of that deep silence anguished long,
Fired to the utterance of her strain,
I seized my harp and poured the impetuous song:
Sons of the Sons of Might!
Who sleep beneath the soil,
Who fell for Freedom in the fight —
For Freedom lived to toil —
Speak Brothers! shall a race of slaves
Leave our foot prints on their graves?
Shall we whose souls unawed and free
Upon our bleak and storm swept hills
With pathless winds, by winding rills,
From youth have walked with Liberty,
Here in her birth-place, in the wintry North,
Crouch, and speak with stinted breath
The name for which our fathers bled?
Freedom! Ho, shout it to the mountains forth!
Speak Freemen! though to speak were death,
Speak! or you shame the dead.