Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, Blue is the quaker-maid, The alder-clump where the brook comes through Breeds cresses in its shade. To be out of the moiling street, With its swelter and its sin! Who has given to me this sweet, And given my brother dust to eat? And when will his wage come in? Freedom BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (American scholar and poet, 1819-1891, author of many impassioned poems of human freedom. An ardent anti-slavery advocate, it was said during the Civil War that his poetry was worth an army corps to the Union) Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed? 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. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard BY THOMAS GRAY (English poet and scholar, 1716-1771; Cambridge professor. It is said that Major Wolfe, while sitting in a row-boat on his way to the night attack upon Quebec, remarked that he would rather have been the author of this poem than the taker of the city) Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the Poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth, e'er gave Await alike th' inevitable hour:-- The paths of glory lead but to the grave.... Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre; But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; Chill penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.