I bowed my laurel’d head Above my lyre and said:―― “What new song shall I sing across the strings? Madden’d for whose new sake What new noise shall I make?” And I answered: “Lo, I will sing of no new things, I will turn to her once more, I have sung so oft before―― Freedom! and worship her, and curse some Kings.” Set on her motherly knee, Her nursing arms round me, I will cling about her neck as a child clings, Re-wounding with my kiss Each scarce-healed cicatrice Doing to her divers and disgusting things Whilst in her ears my chaunt, Re-risen and reboant, Sounds as one sounds, who, being senseless, sings. _Strophe II._ On one cant name of many names I have chosen―― Freedom――lo, once again I call to thee; By the cold earth’s iron-bound ends and oceans frozen, By the rivers that run billowing to the sea, By the lisp and laughter of spring in leafy places, By the storms that follow and the calms that flee, By the pale light flung in men’s funeral faces From holocausts of kings we burn to thee; By the seas that link us and the lands that sever By the foes upon our weather-side and lee―― By all these things and all other things whatever, We call, and howl, and squeak, and shriek to thee, Calling thee early and late, Wild, inarticulate, Calling and bawling that thou set something free. _Strophe III._ But where is the something――a land In the east or the uttermost west―― A land with a grievance, a curse? I heed not her name or her place. So shame on her brow be a brand, So she have but a scourged white breast, And a name that will scan in verse; And I ask for the royal race, For the land opprest. But where shall I find her――where? I mean the land with a wrong Not already outworn By those that have sung for her sake For Byron and bards that were, Were singing of Freedom long Before I was thought of or born, And they plucked all the plums from the cake From the cake of song. _Strophe IV._ Ah, but would that I Had been the first of these! I would have drained them dry, These themes of war and peace, Nor have left one song to sing of Italy, Nor a poet’s picking on the bones of Greece. Then with flowers and fire, And bitter foam and wine, And fangs and fierce desire, And things I call divine, would nauseate so the world that no man’s lyre Should again be struck to a note I had once made mine. * * * * * _Epode._