Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Liberty
By John Hay (18381905)W
“Thus and thus only would I have the Sea”?
For whether lying calm and beautiful
Clasping the earth in love, or throwing back
The smile of heaven from waves of amethyst;
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
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.
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.
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
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 always in thine eyes, O Liberty!
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved,
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.