Women! who shall one day bear Sons to breathe New England air, If ye hear, without a blush, Deeds to make the roused blood rush Like red lava through your veins, For your sisters now in chains,-- Answer! are ye fit to be Mothers of the brave and free? Is true Freedom but to break Fetters for our own dear sake, And, with leathern hearts, forget That we owe mankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free! They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three. COLUMBUS The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, With whims of sudden hush; the reeling sea Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern, Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, falling Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling down The broad backs of the waves, which jostle and crowd To fling themselves upon that unknown shore. Their used familiar since the dawn of time, Whither this foredoomed life is guided on To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring poise 10 One glittering moment, then to break fulfilled. How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, The melancholy wash of endless waves, The sigh of some grim monster undescried, Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine! Yet, night brings more companions than the day To this drear waste; new constellations burn, And fairer stars, with whose calm height my soul Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd 20 Of earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ring Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings Against the cold bars of their unbelief, Knowing in vain my own free heaven beyond. O God! this world, so crammed with eager life, That comes and goes and wanders back to silence Like the idle wind, which yet man's shaping mind Can make his drudge to swell the longing sails Of highest endeavor,--this mad, unthrift world, Which, every hour, throws life enough away 30 To make her deserts kind and hospitable, Lets her great destinies be waved aside By smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels, Who weigh the God they not believe with gold, And find no spot in Judas, save that he, Driving a duller bargain than he ought, Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent. O Faith! if thou art strong, thine opposite Is mighty also, and the dull fool's sneer Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the arm 40 Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, And made the firm-based heart, that would have quailed The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem, The wicked and the weak, by some dark law, Have a strange power to shut and rivet down Their own horizon round us, to unwing Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur With surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks,