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?