In After Days

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I WILL accomplish that and this,
  And make myself a thorn to Things–
  Lords, councillors and tyrant kings–
Who sit upon their thrones and kiss

The rod of Fortune; and are crowned
  The sovereign masters of the earth
  To scatter blight and death and dearth
Wherever mortal man is found.

I will do this and that, and break
  The backbone of their large conceit,
  And loose the sandals from their feet,
And show 'tis holy ground they shake.

So sang I in my earlier days,
  Ere I had learned to look abroad
  And see that more than monarchs trod
Upon the form I fain would raise.

Ere I, in looking toward the land
  That broke a triple diadem,
  That grasped at Freedom's garment hem,
Had seen her, sword and torch in hand,

A freedom-fool: ere I had grown
  To know that Love is freedom's strength–
  France taught the world that truth at length!–
And Peace her chief foundation stone.

Since then, I temper so my song
  That it may never speak for blood;
  May never say that ill is good;
Or say that right may spring from wrong:

Yet am what I have ever been–
  A friend of Freedom, staunch and true,
  Who hate a tyrant, be he–you–
A people,–sultan, czar, or queen!

And then the Freedom-haters came
  And questioned of my former song,
  If now I held it right, or wrong:
And still my answer was the same:–

The good still moveth towards the good:
  The ill still moveth towards the ill:
  But who affirmeth that we will
Not form a nobler brotherhood

When communists, fanatics, those
  Who howl their 'vives' to Freedom's name
  And yet betray her unto shame,
Are dead and coffined with her foes.

© George Frederick Cameron