IT MOVES.
“I know it moves,” so said the man
Whose genius read the astral scroll
From east to west, from pole to pole,
Yet, under a terrific ban,
Denied his thought, the truth denied,
And crushed in soul betwixt the strife
Of love of truth and love of life,
To silence doomed he slowly died.
Since that dark hour, ’tis joy to know,
The thoughts of fearless men have moved
As move the stars; the years have proved
Thy deathless worth, Galileo!
What marvel if he shrank with dread
Beneath the lifted iron hand
Whose marks were seen on every land,—
Red marks where truest seers had bled.
The glare of Bruno’s fiery shroud
Still seemed to haunt the midnight skies,
And falling on his menaced eyes,
His head the noble Pisan bowed.
And who the number may compute
Of kindred souls, whose secret fears
Have held them captive all their years,
And kept their lips forever mute?
Grim Persecution’s sleepless rage
Has many guises, all the same
In essence, differing but in name,
O’er all the earth, from age to age.
And if less potent now for harm,
Let Freedom’s watchmen guard her towers;
Happy to cry the all-well hours,
Ready to ring the prompt alarm.
Low sinks the race where thought and speech
Are helpless slaves to crown and cross;
Where heresy brings blame and loss;
And each is set a spy on each.
Blest is the soil where men can stand
And say it is a crime to hide
The light of reason, to deride
The one sure Deity’s command—
The voice of Conscience;—here to-night
This heritage of centuries, old
And new, in sacred trust we hold:
Our watchword—“Freedom and the Right.”