I
Our Country still is in the womb, dark Time.
It shows life by its brisk and robust turns,
Which thrill the Mother, Liberty, who yearns
To see her man-child born. Oh, how sublime
With genius, not of one, but every climb
Where art forms beauty, or the spirit spurns
The foul and spurious,—her desire, that burns
Prenatally in him, to form him prime!
Oh People, all—Italian, Spanish, French,
Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek—
What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak?
Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench
From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek
Dead consciences and plague earth with their stench.