Freedom poems
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The Cherry Tree
© David Wagoner
Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved
by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots
straight up, blood red, into the light again.
Ode to Duty
© André Breton
Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus, ut non tantum recte facere possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim"
"I am no longer good through deliberate intent, but by long habit have reached a point where I am not only able to do right, but am unable to do anything but what is right."
(Seneca, Letters 120.10)
A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXXVI
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The majesty of Rome to me is nought;
The imperial story of her conquering car
Touches me only with compassionate thought
For the doomed nations faded by her star.
Lines For A Flag Raising Ceremony
© Edgar Albert Guest
FULL many a flag the breeze has kissed;
Through ages long the morning sun
Corsons Inlet
© Archie Randolph Ammons
I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf
rounded a naked headland
and returned
To the Shade of Burns
© Charlotte Turner Smith
Mute is thy wild harp, now, O Bard sublime!
Who, amid Scotia’s mountain solitude,
Who Understands Me but Me
© James Russell Lowell
They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
Poet's Obligation
© Pablo Neruda
So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.
The Snowmass Cycle
© Stephen Dunn
If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps its because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.
The Dream of Freedom
© Owen Suffolk
'Twas night, and the moonbeams palely fell
On the gloomy walls of a cheerless cell,
Elegy X
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Yet the dead youth must go on alone.
In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy. With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream."
Lines From A Letter To A Young Clerical Friend
© John Greenleaf Whittier
A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,
A faith which doubt can never dim,
A heart of love, a lip of fire,
O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
The Watchers
© John Greenleaf Whittier
BESIDE a stricken field I stood;
On the torn turf, on grass and wood,
Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights
© Alfred Tennyson
Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.
OEnone
© Alfred Tennyson
"Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,
That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd
And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech
Came down upon my heart.
Thomas Jefferson
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Thomas Jefferson,
What do you say
Under the gravestone
Hidden away?
Stanzas
© Sir Henry Parkes
Up go the beautiful and world-watch'd stars,
Lifting the glory of America,
