Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.
The airs of heaven blow o'er me;
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,—
Pure, generous, brave, and free.
A dream of man and woman
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold!
The love of God and neighbor;
An equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.
Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own.
Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.
I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.
John Green leaf Whittier.
TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON
In the great Civil War in England between the Puritans and Charles the First the author of this poem sacrificed everything in the royal cause. That cause was defeated and Lovelace was imprisoned. In these stanzas he makes the most of his gloomy situation and sings the joys of various kinds of freedom. First is the freedom brought by love, when his sweetheart speaks to him through the grate of the dungeon. Second is the freedom brought by the recollection of good fellowship, when tried and true comrades took their wine straight—"with no allaying Thames." Third is the freedom brought by remembrance of the king for whom he was suffering. Finally comes the passionate and heroic assertion that though the body of a man may be confined, nevertheless his spirit can remain free and chainless.