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robe; If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time, For tyranny of late is cunning grown, And in its own good season tramples down The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime, Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for and Bequeathed--a heritage of heart and hand, And proud distinction from each other land, Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion, As if his senseless sceptre were a wand Full of the magic of exploded science-- Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime, Above the far Atlantic! She has taught Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag, May strike to those whose red right hands have bought Rights cheaply earned with blood. Still, still forever, Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, That it should flow, and overflow, than creep Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, Dammed like the dull canal with locks and chains, And moving as a sick man in his sleep, Three paces, and then faltering:--better be Where the extinguished Spartans still are free, In their proud charnel of Thermopylae, Than stagnate in our marsh,--or o'er the deep Fly, and one current to the ocean add, One spirit to the souls our fathers had, One freeman more, America, to thee! THE EAST From 'The Bride of Abydos' Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Guel in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute: Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky, In color though varied, in beauty may vie, And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye; Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, And all, save the spirit of man, is divine? 'Tis the clime of the East! 'tis the l
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