Albert Pike

Apostrophe

Oh, Liberty! thou child of many hopes,
Nursed in the cradle of the human heart;
While Europe in her glimmering darkness gropes,
Do not from us, thy chosen ones, depart!
Still be to us, as thou hast been and art,
The spirit that we breathe! Oh, teach us still
Thine arrowy truths unquailingly to dart,
Until all tyrants and oppressors reel,
And despotisms tremble at thy thunder-peal!

Methinks thy daylight now is lighting up
The far horizon of yon hemisphere
With golden lightning. Over the hoary top
Of the blue mountains see I not appear
Thy lovely dawn,while Shame, and crouching Fear,
And Slavery perish under tottering thrones?
How long, oh Liberty! until we hear
Instead of an insulted people's moans,
The crushed and wreathing tyrants uttering deep groans?

Is not thy spirit living still in France?
Will it not waken soon in storm and fire?
Will earthquakes not 'mid thrones and cities dance,
And Freedom's altar be the funeral pyre
Of Tyranny and all his offspring dire?
In Hungary, Germany, Italia, Spain,
And Austria, thy spirit doth inspire
The multitude; and though, too long, in vain,
They struggle in deep gloom, yet slavery's night shall wane.

And shall we sleep, while all the earth awakes?
Shall we turn slaves, while on the Alpine cones
And vine-clad hills of Europe brightly breaks
The morning-light of Liberty? What thrones
Can equal those which on our fathers' bones
The demagogue would build? What chains so gall,
As those the self-made Helot scarcely owns,
Till they eat deeply; till the live pains crawl
Into his soul, who madly caused himself to fall?

Men's freedom may be wrested from their hands,
And they may mourn; but not like those who throw
Their heritage away; who clasp the bands
On their own limbs, and creeping, blindly go
Like timorous fawns, to their own overthrow.
Shall we thus fall? Is it so difficult,
To think that we are free, yet be not so?
To shatter down in one brief hour of guilt,
The holy fane of freedom that our fathers built!