Chapter II

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?

NEMESIS

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.

ALL STARS MERGED IN ONE

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.

LINCOLN'S LIGHTENING IN WILSON'S HANDS

I

Who is to rise and hurl God's flame world-wide,
As Lincoln hurled it, setting free a race
From Sphinx-shaped wrong--a beast with human face?
That shattered, how our land rose glorified
And, from the stars last laggard, soared, their guide!
Oh, who can take Promethean Lincoln's place,
To bring light where-so-ever he can trace
A Human, with his rights to soul denied?

He must be one, not only to illume
All ages, and not leave one region dim,
But at no height, allow his senses swim,
Or let mirages lure him with false bloom.
Lo! Here one comes with all the virtues prim
To hurl God's fire and end all human gloom.