They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame, If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame: They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet, And by her golden tresses drew Mercy along the pavement of the street. O Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew So gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'er Shone in upon the chaos of their lair! They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30 And worshipped it with flame and blood, A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair. III What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know; These have found piteous voice in song and prose; But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe, Their grinding centuries,--what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears, Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, 40 O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men, Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block: What marvel if, when came the avenging shock, 'Twas Atë, not Urania, held the pen? IV With eye averted, and an anguished frown, Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife, Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, 50 Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife; Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, And where it enters there is no despair: Not first on palace and cathedral spire Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire; While these stand black against her morning skies, The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60 Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; It lights the poet's heart up like a star; Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar, And twined with golden threads his futile snare. That swift, convicting glow all round him ran; 'Twas close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man. V O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70 Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root? But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain; A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, Thy race has ceased to reign, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant;--thou mayst feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80 VI