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| SPIRIT 1 of freedom, hail!— | |
| Whether thy steps are in the sunny vale, | |
| Where peace and happiness reside | |
| With innocence and thee, or glide | |
| To caverns deep and vestal fountains, | 5 |
| ’Mid the stern solitude of mountains, | |
| Where airy voices still prolong | |
| From cliff to cliff thy jocund song,— | |
| We woo thy presence: Thou wilt smile upon | |
| The full heart’s tribute to thy favorite Son, | 10 |
| Who held communion with thee, and unfurl’d | |
| In light thy sacred charter to the world. | |
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| We feel thy influence, Power divine, | |
| Whose angel smile can make the desert shine; | |
| For thou hast left thy mountain’s brow, | 15 |
| And art with men no stranger now. | |
| Where’er thy joyous train is seen | |
| Disporting with the merry hours, | |
| Nature laughs out, in brighter green, | |
| And wreathes her brow with fairy flowers: | 20 |
| Pleasure waves her rosy wand,— | |
| Plenty opens wide her hand,— | |
| On Rapture’s wings, | |
| To heaven the choral anthem springs,— | |
| And all around, above, below, | 25 |
| Exult and mingle, as they glow, | |
| In such harmonious ecstacies as play’d, | |
| When earth was new, in Eden’s light and shade. | |
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| But not in peaceful scenes alone | |
| Thy steps appear,—thy power is known. | 30 |
| Hark!—the trump!—its thrilling sound | |
| Echoes on every wind, | |
| And man awakes, for ages bound | |
| In leaden lethargy of mind: | |
| He wakes to life!—earth’s teeming plains | 35 |
| Rejoice in his control; | |
| He wakes to strength!—and bursts the chains | |
| Whose rust was in his soul; | |
| He wakes to liberty!—and walks abroad | |
| All disenthrall’d, the image of his God. | 40 |
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| See, on the Andes’ fronts of snow | |
| The battle-fires of Freedom glow, | |
| Where triumph hails the children of the sun, | |
| Beneath the banner of their Washington. | |
| Go on, victorious Bolivar! | 45 |
| Oh! fail not—faint not—in the war | |
| Waged for the liberty of nations! | |
| Go on, resistless as the earthquake’s shock, | |
| When all your everlasting mountains rock | |
| Upon their deep foundations. | 50 |
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| And Greece,—the golden clime of light and song, | |
| Where infant genius first awoke | |
| To arts and arms and godlike story,— | |
| Wept for her fallen sons in bondage long: | |
| She weeps no more;—Those sons have broke | 55 |
| Their fetters,—spurn the slavish yoke, | |
| And emulate their fathers’ glory. | |
| The Crescent wanes before the car | |
| Of liberty’s ascending Star, | |
| And Freedom’s banners wave upon | 60 |
| The ruins of the Parthenon. | |
| The clash of arms rings in the air, | |
| As erst it rung at Marathon;— | |
| Let songs of triumph echo there! | |
| Be free! ye Greeks, or, failing, die | 65 |
| In the last trench of liberty. | |
| Ye hail the name of Washington; pursue | |
| The path of glory he has mark’d for you. | |
| But should your recreant limbs submit once more | |
| To hug the soil your fathers ruled before | 70 |
| Like gods on earth,—if o’er their hallow’d graves | |
| Again their craven sons shall creep as slaves, | |
| When shall another Byron sing and bleed | |
| For you!—oh, when for you another Webster plead! | |
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| Ye christian kings and potentates, | 75 |
| Whose sacrilegious leagues have twined | |
| Oppression’s links around your States, | |
| Say, do ye idly hope to bind | |
| The fearless heart and thinking mind? | |
| When ye can hush the tempest of the deep, | 80 |
| Make the volcano in its cavern sleep, | |
| Or stop the hymning spheres, ye may control, | |
| With sceptred hand, the mighty march of soul. | |
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| But what are ye? and whence your power | |
| Above the prostrate world to tower, | 85 |
| And lord it all alone? | |
| What god—what fiend—has e’er decreed, | |
| That one shall reign, while millions bleed | |
| To prop the tyrant’s throne? | |
| Gaze on the ocean, ye would sway:— | 90 |
| If from its tranquil breast, the day | |
| Shine out in beams as bright and fair | |
| As if the heavens were resting there, | |
| Ye, in its mirror surface, may | |
| See that ye are but men; | 95 |
| But should the angry storm-winds pour | |
| Its chainless surges to the shore, | |
| Like Canute, ye may then | |
| A fearful lesson learn, ye ne’er would know,— | |
| The weakness of a tyrant’s power,—how low | 100 |
| His pride is brought, when, like that troubled sea, | |
| Men rise in chainless might, determined to be free. | |
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| And they will rise who lowly kneel, | |
| Crush’d by oppression’s iron heel, | |
| They yet will rise,—in such a change as sweeps | 105 |
| The face of nature, when the lightning leaps | |
| From the dark cloud of night, | |
| While heaven’s eternal pillars reel afar, | |
| As o’er them rolls the Thunderer’s flaming car,— | |
| And in the majesty and might | 110 |
| That freedom gives, my country, follow thee, | |
| In thy career of strength and glorious liberty. | |
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| Immortal Washington! to thee they pour | |
| A grateful tribute on thy natal hour, | |
| Who strike the lyre to liberty, and twine | 115 |
| Wreathes for her triumphs,—for they all are thine, | |
| Woo’d by thy virtues to the haunts of men, | |
| From mountain precipice and rugged glen, | |
| She bade thee vindicate the rights of man, | |
| And in her peerless march, ’t was thine to lead the van. | 120 |
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| Though no imperial Mausoleum rise, | |
| To point the stranger where the hero lies, | |
| He sleeps in glory. To his humble tomb,— | |
| The shrine of freedom,—pious pilgrims come, | |
| To pay the heart-felt homage, and to share | 125 |
| The sacred influence that reposes there. | |
| Say, ye blest spirits of the good and brave, | |
| Were tears of holier feeling ever shed | |
| On the proud marble of the regal dead, | |
| Than gush’d at Vernon’s rude and lonely grave, | 130 |
| When from your starry thrones, ye saw the Son | |
| He loved and honor’d, weep for Washington! | |
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| As fade the rainbow hues of day, | |
| Earth’s gorgeous pageants pass away: | |
| Its temples, arches, monuments, must fall; | 135 |
| For Time’s oblivious hand is on them all. | |
| The proudest kings will end their toil, | |
| To slumber with the humble dead,— | |
| Earth’s conquerors mingle with the soil, | |
| That groan’d beneath their iron tread, | 140 |
| And all the trophies of their power and guilt, | |
| Sink to oblivion with the blood they spilt. | |
| But still the everlasting voice of fame | |
| Shall swell, in anthems to the Patriot’s name, | |
| Who toil’d—who lived—to bless mankind, and hurl’d | 145 |
| Oppression from the throne, | |
| Where long she sway’d, remorseless and alone, | |
| Her scorpion sceptre o’er a shrinking world. | |
| And though no sculptured marble guards his dust, | |
| Nor mouldering urn receives the hallow’d trust, | 150 |
| For him a prouder mausoleum towers, | |
| That Time but strengthens with his storms and showers,— | |
| The land he saved, the empire of the Free,— | |
| Thy broad and steadfast throne, TRIUMPHANT LIBERTY! | |
