Rise, like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fall'n on you. Ye are many, they are few. What is Freedom! Ye can tell That which Slavery is too well, For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. 'Tis to work, and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs as in a cell For the tyrants' use to dwell: So that ye for them are made, Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade; With or without your own will, bent To their defence and nourishment. 'Tis to see your children weak With their mothers pine and peak, When the winter winds are bleak:-- They are dying whilst I speak. 'Tis to hunger for such diet As the rich man in his riot Casts to the fat dogs that lie Surfeiting beneath his eye. 'Tis to be a slave in soul, And to hold no strong control Over your own wills, but be All that others make of ye. Real Liberty BY HENRIK IBSEN (See page 241) Away with the State! I will take part in that revolution. Undermine the whole conception of a state, declare free choice and spiritual kinship to be the only all-important conditions of any union, and you will have the commencement of a liberty that is worth something. Christmas in Prison (_From "The Jungle"_) BY UPTON SINCLAIR (See pages 43, 143, 194) In the distance there was a church-tower bell that tolled the hours one by one. When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying upon the floor with his head in his arms, listening. Instead of falling silent at the end, the bell broke out into a sudden clangor. Jurgis raised his head; what could that mean--a fire? God! suppose there were to be a fire in this jail! But then he made out a melody in the ringing; there were chimes. And they seemed to waken the city--all around, far and near, there were bells, ringing wild music; for fully a minute Jurgis lay lost in wonder, before, all at once, the meaning of it broke over him--that this was Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve--he had forgotten it entirely! There was a breaking of flood-gates, a whirl of new memories and new griefs rushing into his mind. In far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it came to him as if it had been yesterday--himself a little child, with his lost brother and his dead father in the cabin in the deep black forest, where the snow fell all day and all night and buried them from the world. It was too far off for Santa Claus in Lithuania, but it was not too far for peace and good-will to men, for the wonder-bearing vision of the Christ-child.