Freedom poems
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I Heard Immanuel Singing
© Vachel Lindsay
(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.)
I heard Immanuel singing
Within his own good lands,
I saw him bend above his harp.
This, My Song, Is Made For Kerensky
© Vachel Lindsay
Hail the Russian picture around the little box:
Exiles,
Troops in files,
Generals in uniform,
Mujiks in their smocks,
And holy maiden soldiers who have cut away their locks.
Virginia
© Thomas Babbington Macaulay
Fragments of a Lay Sung in the Forum on the Day Whereon Lucius Sextius Sextinus Lateranus and Caius Licinius Calvus Stolo Were Elected Tribunes of the Commons the Fifth Time, in the Year of the City CCCLXXXII.
Ye good men of the Commons, with loving hearts and true,
Milton--December 9, 1608: December 9, 1908
© George Meredith
Homage to him
His debtor band, innumerable as waves
Running all golden from an eastern sun,
Joyfully render, in deep reverence
Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton's name,
Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear.
The Crisis
© John Greenleaf Whittier
ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's strand;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free,
Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea;
King Arthur's Men Have Come Again
© Vachel Lindsay
[Written while a field-worker in the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois.]
King Arthur's men have come again.
They challenge everywhere
The foes of Christ's Eternal Church.
The Brave Days To Be.
© Arthur Henry Adams
I looked far in the future; down the dim
Echoless avenue of silent years,
And through the cold grey haze of Time I saw
The fair fulfilment of my spacious dream.
Yankee Doodle
© Vachel Lindsay
This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington's Birthday.
Dawn this morning burned all red
Watching them in wonder.
There I saw our spangled flag
Sunshine
© Vachel Lindsay
The sun gives not directly
The coal, the diamond crown;
Not in a special basket
Are these from Heaven let down.
Heroism
© William Cowper
There was a time when Ætna's silent fire
Slept unperceived, the mountain yet entire;
The Perfect Marriage
© Vachel Lindsay
I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on:
Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone.
Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine
Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine:
Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none;
Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one).
The White Man's Burden
© Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To the Unknown Goddess
© Rudyard Kipling
Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar?Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind?
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the West,
Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart in my breast?Will you stay in the Plains till September -- my passion as warm as the day?
A British PHILIPPIC
© Mark Akenside
Occasion'd by the Insults of the Spaniards, and the present Preparations for War, 1738.
The Domestic Affections
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Favor'd of Heav'n! O Genius! are they thine,
When round thy brow the wreaths of glory shine;
While rapture gazes on thy radiant way,
'Midst the bright realms of clear and mental day?
A Song of the White Men
© Rudyard Kipling
1899Now, this is the cup the White Men drink
When they go to right a wrong,
And that is the cup of the old world's hate--
Cruel and strained and strong.
An Australian Paean1876
© Marcus Clarke
The English air is fresh and fair,
The Irish fields are green;
Nathan The Wise - Act IV
© Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
SCENE.--The Cloister of a Convent.
The FRIAR alone.
The Old Issue
© Rudyard Kipling
Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
"Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime! "
(Trumpets in the marshes-in the eyot at Runnymede!)
