In sooth, our Western pioneer
Was all as prescient as he
Who cried, "The desert shall exult,
The wild shall blossom as the rose,"
And to a passing rich result
Through summer heats and winter snows
Toiling to prove himself a seer,
Accomplished his own prophecy.
Lo, here a greater far than he,
A prophet nation hath its dwelling,
With multitudinous voice foretelling,
"Man shall be free!"

VII.

Hellas for Beauty, Rome for Order, stood,
And Israel for the Good;
Our message to the world is Liberty;
Not the rude freedom of anarchic hordes,
But reasoned kindness, whose benignant code
Upon the emblazoned walls of history
We carved with our good swords,
And crimsoned with our blood.
Last, from our eye we plucked the obscuring mote,
(Not without tears expelled, and sharpest pain,)
From swarthy limbs the galling chain
With shock on mighty shock we smote,
Whereby with clearer gaze we scan
The heaven-writ message that we bear for man.
Not ours to give, as erst the Genoese,
Of a new world the keys;
But of the prison-world ye knew before
Hewing in twain the door,
To thralls of custom and of circumstance
We preach deliverance.
O self-imprisoned ones, be free! be free!
These fetters frail, by doting ages wrought
Of basest metals--fantasy and fear,
And ignorance dull, and fond credulity--
Have moldered, lo! this many a year;
See, at a touch they part, and fall to naught!
Yours is the heirship of the universe,
Would ye but claim it, nor from eyes averse
Let fall the tears of needless misery;
Deign to be free!

VIII.

The prophets perish, but their word endures;
The word abides, the prophets pass away;
Far be the hour when Hellas' fate is yours,
O Nation of the newer day!
Unmeet it were that I,
Who sit beside your hospitable fire
A stranger born--though honoring as a sire
The land that binds me with a closer tie
Than hers that bore me--should from sullen throat
Send forth a raven's ominous note
Upon a day of jubilee.
Yet signs of coming ill I see,
Which Heaven avert! Nay, rather let me deem
That like a bright and broadening stream
Fed by a hundred affluents, each a river
Far-sprung and full, Columbia's life shall flow
By level meads majestically slow,
Blessing and blest forever!