FREEDOM IN AMERICA
WHERE is thy home, O Freedom? Have they set
Thine image up upon a rock to greet
All comers, shaking from their wandering feet
The dust of old world bondage, to forget
The tyrannies of fraud and force, nor fret,
Where men are equal, slavish chain unmeet,
Nor bitter bread of discontent to eat,
Here, where all races of the earth are met?
America, beneath thy banded flag
Of old it was thy boast that men were free
To think, to speak, to meet, to come and go.
What meaneth then the gibbet and the gag
Held up to Labour’s sons who would not see
Fair Freedom but a mask—a hollow show?
Oct. 7, 1887.