Freedom poems
/ page 11 of 111 /The Captive Pirate
© Caroline Norton
That the ruin'd fortress towers
Number'd his despairing hours,
And beneath their careless tread,
Sleeps-the broken-hearted dead!
No Better Land Than This
© Edgar Albert Guest
If I knew a better country in this glorious world today
Where a man's work hours are shorter and he's drawing bigger pay,
If the Briton or the Frenchman had an easier life than mine,
I'd pack my goods this minute and I'd sail across the brine.
But I notice when an alien wants a land of hope and cheer,
And a future for his children, he comes out and settles here.
My Native Land!
© Caroline Norton
WHERE is the minstrel's native land?
Where the flames of light and feeling glow;
Where the flowers are wreathed for beauty's brow;
Where the bounding heart swells strong and high,
With holy hopes which may not die--
There is my native land!
Queen Mab: Part IX.
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Earth floated then below;
The chariot paused a moment there;
The Spirit then descended;
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done,
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven.
Book Seventh [Residence in London]
© William Wordsworth
Returned from that excursion, soon I bade
Farewell for ever to the sheltered seats
Of gowned students, quitted hall and bower,
And every comfort of that privileged ground,
Well pleased to pitch a vagrant tent among
The unfenced regions of society.
The Southern Pulpit
© Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
The Southern pulpit, in our eyes,
Descends to make a compromise
With evil things in heaven's name;
The kind that brings a blush of shame.
Sent To Mr. Haley, On Reading His Epistles On Epic Poetry
© Henry James Pye
What blooming garlands shall the Muses twine,
What verdant laurels weave, what flowers combine,
Bismarck at Canossa: Sonnets
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
NOT ALL disgraced, in that Italian town,
The imperial German cowered beneath thine hand,
Safe And Sound
© Ezra Pound
My name is Nunty Cormorant
And my finance is sound,
I lend you Englishmen hot air
At one and three the pound.
The Oldest Inhabitant
© Augusta Davies Webster
"AND when came I to this town?" did he say!
A question asked for the asking's sake,
The Irish Emigrants Mother
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
"Oh! come, my mother, come away, across the sea-green water;
Oh! come with me, and come with him, the husband of thy daughter;
Oh! come with us, and come with them, the sister and the brother,
Who, prattling climb thy ag'ed knees, and call thy daughter-mother.
Ode To Naples
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
EPODE 1a.
I stood within the City disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Call Of Liberty. May 1809
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
YE nations of Europe! arising to war,
And scorning submission to tyranny's might
Oh! follow the track of my bright blazing car,
Diffusing a path-way of radiance afar,
Dispelling the shadows of night!