I am Liberty--God’s daughter! My symbols--a law and a torch; Not a sword to threaten slaughter, Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch; But a light that the world may see And a truth that shall make men free. I am the sister of Duty, And I am the sister of Faith; To-day adored for my beauty, To-morrow led forth to death. I am she whom ages prayed for; Heroes suffered undismayed for; Whom the martyrs were betrayed for! I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me: Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free. One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be won? Freedom is more than a resolution--he is not free who is free alone. Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the circling sun; Evil recedes from the spirit’s proving as mist from the hollows when night is done. Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the rights are won; Wrong shall die with the understanding--one truth clear and the work is done. Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety enslaved for ten; My word shall stand against mart and college; _The planet belongs to its living men!_ And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a kindly shore, I am Liberty! patient, deathless--set by love at the nation’s door. AMERICA[6] O Land magnanimous, republican! The last for Nationhood, the first for Man! Because thy lines by Freedom’s hand were laid, Profound the sin to change or retrograde. From base to cresting let thy work be new; ’Twas not by aping foreign ways it grew. To struggling peoples give at least applause; Let equities, not precedent, subtend your laws; Like rays from that great Eye the altars show, That fall triangular, free states should grow, The soul above, the brain and hand below. Believe that strength lies not in steel nor stone; That perils wait the land whose heavy throne, Though ringed by swords and rich with titled show, Is based on fettered misery below; That nations grow where every class unites For common interests and common rights; Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son, Till step by step the topmost height is won; Where every hand subscribes to every rule, And free as air are voice and vote and school! A nation’s years are centuries. Let Art Portray thy first, and Liberty will start From every field in Europe at the sight. “Why stand these thrones between us and the light?” Strong men will ask, “Who built these frontier towers To bar out men of kindred blood with ours?”