Freedom, Truth and Beauty / Sonnets

Speak Freedom! When a haggard fugitive,

Thy dwelling was a swamp, who first to trace

Thy crimson footprints to thy hiding place?

With signs thou hadst not many days to live,

I found thee. Had the sun more heart to give

To warm thee, than I gave? Ah, then and there

Thy heart said to my heart; "Ill would I fare

Without thee. I give love for love, believe".

Thy silence, when in glory, troubles me.

Oh! warm blood dashed back cold, chills to the bone!

What do I ask for? Only Erin's own,

That which God gave her, and, if true it be,

Thou art the minister of justice grown,

Thy gratitude should thunder God's decree.

What! Why bemoan one island in the sea,

When I can range like mountains, or, the sun,

Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run

To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee?

Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily,

Is, thou and I eternally are one;

And this god-passion which no power can stun,

I owe to her, who gave her soul to me.

Oh, when I see her golden hair, adrift

On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef,

And know she breathes with her sublime belief,

It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift

Her saintly features, and dry them of grief,

Wads't not, but waitest for the tide to shift.

America! 'Tis not thy mines of gold,

Nor streams from mounts to meadows, like God's hand

From out the heavens, a-flash across the land

In long, deep sweeps to quicken winter's mould

To reaps of ripeness,—that mine eyes behold,

Invoking thee; for these are mere shore-sand

To the broad ocean of thy spirit grand,

Forming for man a new world for the old.

'Tis Liberty, to whose most blessed birth

The stars all lead, rejoicing, which souls thee

With God's compassion for humanity,—

That I invoke; and, now, when all the earth

Bears palms and chants hosannas—what! shall she,

The most devout, be shut from Freedom's mirth?

All English glory is in "Kipling's Boots."

O English People! read that poem true,

And answer,—are those maddening men not you?

Oh, not yea few, who gather all the loots,

But yea vast legions, lured to be recruits

To march, march, march and march with naught in view

But boots, boots, boots with blood and mud soaked through,—

And, after ages, with out rest, or fruits!

"Boots, boots, boots, and no discharge from war,"—

That is the Empire's anthem. Brass it out,

Ye Orchestras! But oh, leave not in doubt

Its import, Kipling,—that 'tis maelstrom roar—

'Tis England's streams of home-life, world about

And down a gulf, for Greed and Pride on shore!

If deaf to Shelley's loudest sky-lark strain,

His rage at tyrants, and to Byron's thong,

Nerve-proof, how wake the English to the wrong

Done their true selves, no less than to the slain,

When willing weapons for Ambition's gain?

Aye, weapons only; for, to whom belong

The minds of England, and treed fields of song—

Nay, all but grave-ground, grudged by hill and plain?

O English People, whom the crafty class

Has huddled into graves from sight and sound

Of what God hands you, and, with pence, or pound,

Lids down your wild dead stare,—wake! why so crass?

See in the Celts spring-burst from underground,

The Human Resurrection come to pass.

Oh, what are England's lines of lords and kings,

Shakespeare, to thine, a-throb with thought and feeling?

In thine, imagination shines, revealing

The soul's convictions, swift on dawn-ward wings

From beastly life and such Hell-smelling things,

As wealth and pomp from church and abbey stealing,—

And hearts in hopes high Belfries, Heavenward pealing,

As Time, his Sun and Starry censor, swings.

Would thou wert England's Nature, Bard Supreme,

To fashion kings and lordlings fit to rule;

They would be flesh and blood, not fiend and ghoul;

And would thou wert her Sun, that every beam

Might not, for tally, show a youth's blood-pool,

Choking blithe Spring, as, now, to earth's extreme.

The righteousness of England! "Tis to kneel

Full weight on weaker nations, and entone

Hosannas louder than the victims groan;

Then, stooping, drink their blood with gulps of zeal."

What right have wounds, though wide, to throb, or feel?

'Tis blasphemy to England's crimson throne.

Knee-deep in Erin's blood, she mocks Christ's moan:

Forgive them, Lord! they know not their true weal.

"Whose is the fault? Tis not my arrogance,

But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee.

What right hadst Thou to make these people free

And let all nature prompt them to advance?—

Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me,

Instead of Wisdom, to approve Thy plans!"

The Bard's curse: "Ruin seize thee Ruthless King,"

Took bat-like form for hollow echo-flight.

Though stoned and lanced at, when, at fall of night,

It darted forth with ghastly—spreading wing,

It found in fresh, wide, royal ravishing,

New hollows, dark with horror and sad plight,

To dash in and live on. Oh, to my sight,

How grows its grimness, while eternaling!

Deep are the minds of Wales, but far more deep

The horror, gulfed out by McCreedy, firing

On men defenseless and, through want, expiring.

Oh, from that gulf the Bard's curse makes a sweep

Up to the Sun and, from its long desiring,

Grown eagle, shrieks to heaven from steep to step!

"A dirty work," said Dyer, rebuked for spilling

Hundreds of lives to irrigate new lands.

A dirty work, but not for British hands,

Dabbling in blood to earn each day their shilling.

Hark! Mohawk Valley and Wyoming, chilling

With thought of Tarleton's King-serving bands,

And Canada red-clayed, though high snow stands,

Cry: Work for which the British are too willing!

Invaded lands need terror irrigation

To make them fruitful. Better flood the field,

Then let the native bloom become the yield;

And, so, this Dyer submerged a small whole nation

With crimson death, that England might, deep-keeled,

Have for display, new seas of desolation.

The ocean, holding pure the azure's blue,

Laughs at the tempests, with one empire's dust

After an other, to round out Earth's crust.

Ah, so does Human Nature hold the hue

It takes from heaven, its conscience, and laughs, too,

At madness, wrecking life and with its gust

Forming new islands, where Pride, Greed, or Lust,

Welcomes the crater's glare, in sun-light's lieu.

Look in the sea and deep, what scattered rock,

The islands which at dusk, the tempest piled!

Ere rose a star, they sank with crews, beguiled.

O Tempests that with world formations, mock

The good Creator, how, as ye grow wild,

Earth quakes and no live thing survives the shock.

Our country is not rock and wood and stream,

But soul transfusing them. What is the soul?

The substance, born of God, above control

And, when one, with God's love, called "Will," supreme;

And Freedom is the soul in thought, and dream

That Nature's beauty and harmonious whole—

God's foot-steps—followed, life attains its Goal;

And soul is purpose to achieve God's scheme.

The soul, then,—our true country,—is the brave

Who fought and bled for Freedom, or will fight

To their last pulse, last breath, for Human Right.——

Great soul! oh, how like bubbles in the wave,

Are the Sierras in cerulean flight,

To thy true grandeur, letting nought enslave!

O thou art Character—art only those

Who formed the good and great by thought, or deed.

All others are not worth a moment's heed,—

Mere prairie dogs, who raise gold hills in rows—

When gazing at thy glory; for that grows

With Freedom from all foul untruths; with lead

In art for weal; with science for all woes;

With hate of thrall and help for all unfreed.

No mere foot-shadow, on time's wall, art thou,

Without eye-sparkle, swing of arm, warm flow

From heart to vain, and cheeks with health of glow.

Oh, 'tis eternal heights reflect thy brow

And shoulders, that avert man's overthrow,

Threatened all times, and never more than now.

Oh, what if lone and long thy lofty flight,

My country? Is thy vision not as clear

As that of Vesper, dauntless pioneer

On Twilight's altitude? As from that height,

He sees plain through the thick black walls of night,

The stars all massing; so dost thou, his peer,

Behold all peoples gathering, year by year,

To scale the clouds to thy White Range of Right.

How thy lone loftness, aloof from wrong,

Refracting man-ward, God's enrapturing smile

Of fruitful fields, leads legions! On they file

And phalanx, and the vision makes thee strong:

What, though God's searchlight flares the sky the while?

It nears not thee, ear-close to heaven's high song.

From out a desert where the trails run red,

Judah and Erin speed their camel pace,

Sighting green palms. The flush on either face

Is from the fissure where each wedged her head

From sandstorms, that hurled heavens down, as they sped;

It is no blush for thought, or conduct, base

To the high trust to bring the Human Race,

Truths, without which Time's offspring are born dead.

In spirit, they are sisters; for, beyond

The desert, where the vision, like a dove,

Soars round the palace of Almighty Love,

God hails them as "My Daughters, true and fond,

Who show man, through Noon blaze, my star above,

And to my will, fail never to respond."

Who, in descent from Heaven's ecstatic throng,

Was twin to light, and ranged from source to sea,

And shore to peak, and God, drew up to thee

The generations happy, pure and strong?

Freedom, as Erin's was, ere ruthless wrong

Caught, scourged and hanged it on the out-law's tree;

And is; for lo! it proves Divinity,

Transfiguring from anguish, ages long.

True, they have strangled Freedom on the cross

Of every Right's suppression—nay, have barred

His body's tomb, and placed a host on guard!

Still, He is risen; His faithful mourn no loss.

He shines forth in their midst. No bolts retard

His entrance, where grand aims for life engross.

The fight in Ireland is 'twixt Man and Brute.

A lion with the sea-surge for his mane,

Is there hurled back by Man with proud disdain,

Although heart-drained with gash from head to foot.

Oh, in that Eden of Forbidden Fruit,

How Satan, searching for a snake in vain,

Fumed forth a monster from his heart and brain—

The Lion—as the serpent's substitute!

Oh, all ye peoples of the World draw nigh!

Stand on the bodies of eight centuries,

Struck dead with horror; for, raised thus, one sees

In Erin, torn, a soul that cannot die,

And that its struggle is Humanity's

Against the fiend, who would give God the lie.

How help take pride in thee, whose golden hair

Of culture trailed the earth for centuries;

Whose throne was freedom and whose realm was peace;

And, in strange lands, whose joy and only care

Were to spread light, and who, not anywhere

Thy charm made headway, planting liberties,

Didst, then, by stealthy step, or creep on knees,

Sow with the lilies, faster-growing tare!

How help love thee, whose hand, raised to the sun,

Glows rosy, and not red with murder's stain?

The angels kiss it. Force can forge no chain

To drag thee false-ward. Like a holy Nun,

Stigmated, how thy faith grows with thy pain—

Aye, till thy Cross, like Constantine's has won.

In rapt, roused Erin, who does not behold

A Venus, rising from the sea of tears,

Up to her native, Earth-illuming spheres?

Her hair, long matted, is a flow of gold

Which even the Sun might wear and feel not cold;

And, oh, her heavenly smile at doubts and fears,

As when she, at all depths, raised to her ears,

Shells of her Glory, murmuring, "Be bold!"

Lo! where the green and orange morn unfurls,

See Erin rise. How shine her golden tresses!

They form her crown, for trailing rocks down whirls,

And reaching all the under-sea recesses,

They draw about her brow, the rarest pearls—

Love for what frees and hate for what oppresses!

All hail to those who, through the stormy night,

Make Liberty the light on Erin's coast;

Who, ceaseless, send up sparks; who hold their post

On each and every ledge of Human Right,

Forming a beacon blaze from base to height

Where Erin's hope may steer and land its host.

Look, Human Nature! Where else canst thou boast

To the eternal stars, so grand a sight?

Look! How men there ennoble human kind

By making Liberty the light to Peace!

All other lights are false. Oh! who but sees

In the unconquerable Celtic mind

That, even in Time, there are Eternities—

Love, true to Right, and Will no wrong can bind!

Why play with words? There never can be peace

Till Ireland is set free. One might as well

Expect the great Arch-angel rest in Hell

And genuflect to Satan's blasphemies,

As Erin's spirit that, for centuries,

Has been aloft with God in virtue, sell,

Like Esaw, her birthright, and not rebel,

But to her home's invaders, bend her knees.

Her spirit is no norbury Banshee—

To wail and, then, to vanish. She will stand

With lifted flambeau, lighted by the hand

That lights the stars, till she again is free,

Inspiring normal man in every land

With love of Freedom, by her scorn of thee.

Look! British fury that, barraging, lights

Up Irish skies, like pathways down to hell,

Doubles its fire to reach our land as well,

Where Freedom's Wardens cry from justice' heights:

"'Tis Deicide to murder Human Rights.

Stop foul God-slaughter where to not rebel,

In order to develop and excel,

Were God in man, succumbed to age-longed blights."

Where Heavenward rose the God in man of old,

Staunch stand these Wardens. Sleepless, they behold

Each turn of England's Evil Eye. They call,

When she would form the fulminate of gold,

A thumb and finger-pinch of which, let fall,

Might blast Columbia's peaks to slit of thrall.

Of all the fulminates, gold is the worst,

Which England, aeroplaning, now, lets drop

By day and night, in bank, press, church and shop,

Timed to the minute that it is to burst.

List to Demosthenes, if not to Hearst,

Sublime Republic! Lest thy great heart stop,

Shocked by the blast of Freedom's every prop,

And bats and owls in dwellings, Human's erst.

"Watch Macedon. She drops her gold, in creeping

Beneath free Athens' sky-ascending stair.

Watch her with glance of sword. Oh, watch, for where

She sows her gold, she comes with scythes for reaping!

Is Athens in ascent with sun-light flare,

To come down ashes, not worth history's keeping?"

In only Wallace and Paul Jones and Burns,

Does Caledonia, child of Erin, show

His mother's features, lit by soul to know

The Right Divine of freedom, when it yearns

For what exalts the human, or, it spurns

What bars its flight to truth—all stars aglow,

That form God's trail to joy for man below?—

Sole trail, as time, who peers through grief, discerns.

O Caledonia, by thy Burn's brave song,

And deeds of Wallace and Paul Jones for Right,

Thy mother knows thee in the dark of night,

And claps thee heart-close. She cries out: "Be strong,

Soul of my soul! though not a Boswell quite,

Still, be whole man! remember Glencoe's wrong."

Wake, Caledonia! though Macauley, Whigging,

Would ward the flames from scarring William's face,

So that, then, Cain might shriek,—here, take my place,

A fugitive and outcast, with no digging

To hide in, nor a rest for my fatiguing;

The mark on me, is but God's finger trace;

On you, 'tis God's whole hand!—Still, there's the blaze!

There's England's soul of merciless intriguing!

List! 'tis the bagpipes welcoming the guest.

See the assembly, dance and feast. Oh, watch

The open heart and flow of good old Scotch;

The English come, as friends, must have the best.

There, hospitality is at top notch,—

And so is treachery in Britain's breast.

The cock crows.—Is he dreaming? 'Tis dark still.

He crows again and now, from farm to farm,

His fellows echo far his dazed alarm

And flap of wings on fences. He is shrill

Because it is not dawn above the hill,

That wakes him, but the English, as they arm,

And murder sleep, that has no dream of harm,

In couch and crib,—to further England's will.

O Caledonia! with such lamp in hand

As Glencoe's horror, thou hast England true.

Why let Froude fiction haze thy vivid view?

Put not thy light out for sound sleep, but stand

And answer, when the mother, whom thou drew

Thy soul from, cries "Glencoe"! when Black and Taned.

O Canada, Long red with cottage flame

From Britain's torch! thy blasts milk not the cloud

To nourish hope; instead, they spread the shroud

On Human Spirit answering Freedom's claim.

Whence comes the cold which icicles with shame,

Thy heart's Niagara, that should thunder loud

Unto thy far off soul in sorrow, bowed

O'er Papineau, whom Thraldom could not tame?

Now following the Friends, who grandly led

The slave through tunnels to the Northern Star,

To find, in freedom, richer bloomage far,

Than the Magnolia o'er the cattle shed,—

I reach thy soul,—where now the Crawfords are,

And learn the cold is not from manhood dead.

Whence comes this cold to Freedom's claim? we know

Only too well,—from creatures of the King,

Who had dragged Hell of every poisonous thing

And, through our country, had spread waste and woe.

Beaten at last, they flocked like carion crow,

On the dead body of their will to sting,

Which drifting Northward, and enlargening,

Loomed Dante's Nimrod, 'mid the Arctic snow.

There, with the reptile's hate of Man Upright,

As God created him, and reptiles veins,

Aflow with deaths cold blood—for that sustains

The life of tyrant and of parasite—

This monster, though half sunk in Hell, remains

High, still, above the Arctic's shuddering night.

The monster's inhalations empty Hell

Of all deterents to Life's flow and flower;

Then, its outbreathings icily devour

The cataract in flight and, down the dell,

The streamlets to delight, and buds, as well,

Of virtue, forming bloom for Freedom's bower;—

Nay, its out breathings,—through Creed hatred's power—

Grow Boreus and face where freeman dwell.

Lo! with Sun-warmth for Truth and Human Right,

Is Boreus met. Who hurles him down the deep?

Look close;—'tis Gladden who, on Freedom's steep,

Is as inspiring, as, on Andes' height,

The great Christ Statue, bidding Rancor sleep

And Life's diverging rays in love, beam Light.

The cataracts wild leap, turned glittering ice

In shame's suspension, and crow souls afeeding

Upon a huge dead body and fast breeding,—

Is, as a scene, not worth the railroad's price;

But, oh, if, with "Excelsior" for device,

Thou climb thy Alpine way, each day exceeding

The other's height, what throngs would watch thy speeding

And, for the thrill thou woulds't give them, come twice!

O Canada! why all this sleigh-bell rhyming?

'Tis on the reindeer, hope, in speed with me

To the grand morning, when thou shalt breathe free

Upon the apex of thine Alpine climbing,

From foulsome, choaking smells of tyranny,

Thick from the Great Sea Serpent's inland sliming.

God said to Wrong: "No further shalt thou go."

This, Monroe heard and held, then, in his heart.

It was this he repeated, when on chart

He made his markings, checking Freedom's foe.

God never grants to Wrong the right to grow;

Because He sets its bounds, does not impart

His blessing on its growth, more than its start;

His blessing goes to Right, to overthrow.

Oh, let thine eyes for migratory flight

Speed southward! Passing Prejudice's Lake,

Green-crusted with stagnation which some take

For verdure, they will see from Andes' height,

How Freedom's battle forms the red day-break,

And tides are swells from thrall, hurled deep from sight.

Thine eyes returning from the Southern Cross,

Will, when like Perry, they have reached the Pole,

Search under it to find thy banished soul,

O Canada, and tell it of thy loss

In letting a foul dead body, which the moss

Of the deep sea should hide, loom as thy whole

And rule, as dead things rule, with death for toll,

As pierced by Papineau through Glamor's gloss.

From South to North, no sky is black but thine.

Thy fecund brain, the Borealis, shows

A swaying disc with shades of dark for glows,

With but a faint salt smell of Color's brine,

The pent-up billows in the disc's dark close,

Which might flood midnight with rare, world-wide shine.

We seek no annexation, but of Mind,

Heart, Spirit. True, thy clear, sonorous voice

At Freedom's class-call, would make us rejoice,

For, then, close-coasting thrall would fail to find

In the new world, one truant to mankind,

Swimming out to the foreigners' decoys,

Or fast asleep amid his infant toys,

Instead of at the task, which God assigned.

Oh, let thy spirit come, but it must be

Along the star-way to the rising sun—

The way of love; not down creed hates that run,

Like broken stone-steps, to a roaring sea—

The way thou oft, hast come. Rise, and be one

On the new world's Star-top of Liberty.

"The Angels come in dreams," says Holy Writ;

And Science says, "No sleep so deep, but dreams."

Devine appearances with brightening gleams

Toward Paradise up from the demon's pit,

Ever rouse virtue; aye, for God redeems

His fire, wherever hid; the tempest teems,

But still his sparks fly, quick as flint is hit.

Wake, Canada! and let thy Papineaus

Be dreams remembered; yea, let them inspire

Thy life to follow Freedom high and higher

Through Rights' whole range of summits, crowned with snows

Sparkling from star-moulds of the Soul's desire,

On earth from Heaven where, clouds from flames, they rose.

O Freedom! whose pure soul and heart embrace

Translates me into heaven, I draw for breath

The joy of angels who have not known death.

Child-like, I look up in thy loving face,

Else gaze around and point, and curious place

My hand on Mottoes, hung on high. One saith:

"Beware, for he not with me scatterith."

Its meaning comes to me with growth, like grace.

Ah, as a youngster, on its mother's arm,

Seeing a hideous thing approaching night,

Will not lay down its head and shut its eye,

But will with look and lung express alarm—

My mind cries out in dread—when sea and sky

Show dragons, tendencies that work thee harm.

O Freedom! Up to whose raised hand the seas

Leap, playful lions, or with head and main

Across their paws lie couchant—it is pain

To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees,

And vital breathings are infinities,

Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain

The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane

In finger tips, while fawning on their knees.

What! Think the tyrant, whose great soul is trade,

Whose history, a crater, belching black

And lurid, keeps glad Easter morning back

From half the world—loves thee save to invade,

As blackward planned? loves thee, along whose track

March Human rights up to the stars parade?

There where the Tyrant long has loomed, wreck-crowned,

Are young and old hurled to the coast and blast.

Frail are their ships; still, Sun, why glare aghast,

Watching the billows monstering around?

The soul of man was not born to be drowned.

It mounts and mounts, till, at God's throne, at last,

And freedom welcomes it with arms, sky-vast,

As down it comes to meet Thrall and confound.

O, deathless spirit, born of hosts sea-hurled,

Who hast out soared night's stars with agony's cry

For justice! Thou hast come down from the sky,

Heralding doom to Thrall, whose flag unfurled

By steel, or craft, shows, as 'tis hoisted high,

The blood of man and ruin of the world.

What is the Truth? The thought, the act, or cry,

Recasting the Supreme Intelligence;

All else is false. Look! where are stars so dense,

That each has not the freedom of the sky?

And, still, what peace, what glory, reigns on high!

What! with the wisdom of the heavens, dispense?

The Peace, for which our longings grow intense,

Comes through the stars to earth, and but thereby.

What splits dark mid-night and gives earth a thrill?

All stars merged into one—our Country's aim.

It is a lightening, formed by God, to flame

Across the ages and flash bolts to kill

The stranglers, who the heart or spirit, main,

Or choke black in the face, a People's Will.