| |
| WHAT man is there so bold that he should say, | |
| “Thus, and thus only, would I have the Sea”? | |
| For whether lying calm and beautiful, | |
| Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back | |
| The smile of Heaven from waves of amethyst; | 5 |
| Or whether, freshened by the busy winds, | |
| It bears the trade and navies of the world | |
| To ends of use or stern activity; | |
| Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way | |
| To elemental fury, howls and roars | 10 |
| At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust | |
| Of ruin drinks the blood of living things, | |
| And strews its wrecks o’er leagues of desolate shore,— | |
| Always it is the Sea, and men bow down | |
| Before its vast and varied majesty. | 15 |
| |
| So all in vain will timorous ones essay | |
| To set the metes and bounds of Liberty. | |
| For Freedom is its own eternal law: | |
| It makes its own conditions, and in storm | |
| Or calm alike fulfils the unerring Will. | 20 |
| Let us not then despise it when it lies | |
| Still as a sleeping lion, while a swarm | |
| Of gnat-like evils hover round its head; | |
| Nor doubt it when in mad, disjointed times | |
| It shakes the torch of terror, and its cry | 25 |
| Shrills o’er the quaking earth, and in the flame | |
| Of riot and war we see its awful form | |
| Rise by the scaffold, where the crimson axe | |
| Rings down its grooves the knell of shuddering kings. | |
| For ever in thine eyes, O Liberty, | 30 |
| Shines that high light whereby the world is saved, | |
| And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee! | |
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