To the Gulf-lands, summer-bosomed, fanned by ocean’s softest gale,—
Every heart will beat the faster in its sorrow or its scorn,
For the man nor courts nor prisons can annoy another morn!
And from distant climes and nations men shall westward gaze, and say,
“He who perilled all for Freedom on the scaffold dies to-day.”
Never offering was richer, nor did temple fairer rise
For the gods serenely smiling from the blue Olympian skies;
Porphyry or granite column did not statelier cleave the air
Than the posts of yonder gallows with the cross-beam waiting there;
And the victim, wreathed and crownéd, not for Dian nor for Jove,