APOSTROPHE.
Reading edition
———
BY ALBERT PIKE.
———
Oh Liberty! thou child of many hopes,
Nursed in the cradle of the human heart!
While Europe in her glimmering darkness gropes,
Do not from us, thy chosen ones, depart!
Still be to us, as thou hast been, and art,
The Spirit which we breathe! Oh, teach us still
Thy arrowy truths unquailingly to dart,
Until the Tyrant and Oppressor reel,
And Despotism trembles at thy thunder-peal.
Methinks thy sun-rise now is lighting up
The far horizon of yon hemisphere
With golden lightning. O’er the hoary top
Of the blue mountain see I not appear
Thy lovely dawn; while Pain, and crouching Fear,
And Slavery perish under tottering thrones?
How long, oh Liberty! until we hear
Instead of an insulted people’s moans,
The crushed and writhing tyrants uttering their groans?
Is not thy Spirit living still in France?
Will it not waken soon in storm and fire?
Will Earthquake not ’mid thrones and cities dance,
And Freedom’s altar be the funeral pyre
Of Tyranny and all his offspring dire?
In England, Germany, Italia, Spain,
And Switzerland thy Spirit doth inspire
The multitude—and though too long, in vain,
They struggle in deep gloom, yet Slavery’s night shall wane!
And shall we sleep while all the earth awakes?
Shall we turn slaves while on the Alpine cones
And vine-clad hills of Europe brightly breaks
The morning light of liberty?—What thrones
Can equal those which on our fathers’ bones
The demagogue would build? What chains so gall
As those the self-made Helot scarcely owns
Till they eat deeply—till the live pains crawl
Into his soul who caused himself to fall!
Men’s freedom may be wrested from their hands,
And they may mourn; but not like those who throw
Their heritage away—who clasp the bands
On their own limbs, and crawl and blindly go
Like timorous fawns to their own overthrow.
Shall we thus fall? Is it so difficult
To think that we are free, yet be not so—
To shatter down by one brief hour of guilt
The holy fane of Freedom that our fathers built.