THE PILGRIM FATHERS
In every land wherever might holds sway
The Pilgrims’ leaven is at work to-day.
The Mayflower’s cabin was the chosen womb
Of light predestined for the nations’ gloom.
God grant that those who tend the sacred flame
May worthy prove of their Forefathers’ name.
More light has come,—more dangers, too, perplex:
New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex.
The Fathers fled from feudal lords and made
A freehold state; may we not retrograde
To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade.
May we, as they did, teach in court and school
There must be classes, but no class shall rule:
The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool.
Though vast the token of our future glory,
Though tongue of man hath not told such a story,
Surpassing Plato’s dream, More’s phantasy, still we
Have no new principles to keep us free.
As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,
The truths the Fathers taught we need again.
Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves
With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,
And patch our moral leaks with statute law,
We cannot be protected from ourselves!
Still must we keep in every stroke and vote
The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;
Our seal their secret: Liberty can be;
The State is freedom if the Town is free.
The death of nations in their work began;
They sowed the seed of federated man.
Dead nations were but robber-holds, and we
The first battalion of Humanity!
All living nations, while our eagles shine,
One after one, shall swing into our line;
Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide
And bloodless order of their regicide;
The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand
Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.
O People’s Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear;
When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know;
When artist minds in world-wide symbol show;
When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise;
When priests on grand cathedral altars praise;
When pride and arrogance shall disappear,
The Pilgrims’ Vision is accomplished here!
LIBERTY LIGHTING THE WORLD[5]
Majestic warder by the nation’s gate,
Spike-crowned, flame-armed like Agony or Glory,
Holding the tablets of some unknown law,
With gesture eloquent and mute as Fate,—
We stand about thy feet in solemn awe,
Like desert-tribes who seek their sphinx’s story,
And question thee in spirit and in speech;
What art thou? Whence? What comest thou to teach?
What vision hold those introverted eyes
Of revolutions framed in centuries?
Thy flame—what threat, or guide for sacred way?
Thy tablet—what commandment? What Sinai?
Lo! as the waves make murmur at thy base,
We watch the somber grandeur of thy face,
And ask thee—what thou art.
I am Liberty—God’s daughter!
My symbols—a law and a torch;
Not a sword to threaten slaughter,
Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch;
But a light that the world may see
And a truth that shall make men free.
I am the sister of Duty,
And I am the sister of Faith;
To-day adored for my beauty,
To-morrow led forth to death.
I am she whom ages prayed for;
Heroes suffered undismayed for;
Whom the martyrs were betrayed for!
I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me:
Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free.
One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be won?
Freedom is more than a resolution—he is not free who is free alone.
Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the circling sun;
Evil recedes from the spirit’s proving as mist from the hollows when night is done.
Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the rights are won;
Wrong shall die with the understanding—one truth clear and the work is done.
Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety enslaved for ten;
My word shall stand against mart and college; The planet belongs to its living men!
And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a kindly shore,
I am Liberty! patient, deathless—set by love at the nation’s door.
AMERICA[6]
O Land magnanimous, republican!
The last for Nationhood, the first for Man!
Because thy lines by Freedom’s hand were laid,
Profound the sin to change or retrograde.
From base to cresting let thy work be new;
’Twas not by aping foreign ways it grew.
To struggling peoples give at least applause;
Let equities, not precedent, subtend your laws;
Like rays from that great Eye the altars show,
That fall triangular, free states should grow,
The soul above, the brain and hand below.
Believe that strength lies not in steel nor stone;
That perils wait the land whose heavy throne,
Though ringed by swords and rich with titled show,
Is based on fettered misery below;
That nations grow where every class unites
For common interests and common rights;
Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son,
Till step by step the topmost height is won;
Where every hand subscribes to every rule,
And free as air are voice and vote and school!
A nation’s years are centuries. Let Art
Portray thy first, and Liberty will start
From every field in Europe at the sight.
“Why stand these thrones between us and the light?”
Strong men will ask, “Who built these frontier towers
To bar out men of kindred blood with ours?”
Oh, this thy work, Republic! this thy health,
To prove man’s birthright to a commonwealth;
To teach the peoples to be strong and wise,
Till armies, nations, nobles, royalties,
Are laid at rest with all their fears and hates;
Till Europe’s thirteen monarchies are states,
Without a barrier and without a throne,
Of one grand federation like our own!