The frighten’d monarchs come back,
Each comes in state with his train—lawyer, lord, soldier, jailer, and hangman,
The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace, and leadballs do their work,
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily—
The dangling of the rope, the silent and white-lipp’d crowd—
Bloody corpses of young men lie in new-made graves.

The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,
The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,
The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet,
The creatures of power laugh aloud.

But for all this liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel enter’d into full possession.
When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
When the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls,
When it is better to be a rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with a candid and generous heart,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.

Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest borne, to flaunt unrival’d?
O hasten flag of man—O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings,
Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol—run up above them all.

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance,
The rebel gaily adjusting his throat to the rope-noose!
(An old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold, 
I stood very near you old man—silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d,
When cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal’d wounds, you mounted the scaffold.)

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs, all the beautiful disdain and calmness of martyrs,
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts, I see nimble ghosts whichever way I look,
I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,
Lo, freedom’s features fresh undimm’d look forth—the same immortal face looks forth—
Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women exist.

Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for liberty,
All the brave strong men—devoted, hardy men—who’ve forward sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands,
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning,
Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish,
All these things bear fruits—and they are good.

The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,
The determined purpose—death does not stop it,
It is filled up by others,
And their death by others still.
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets,
Those hearts pierced by the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality,
They live in other young men,
They live in brothers, again ready to defy!
They were purified by death—they were taught and exalted.

Liberty, let others despair of you—I never despair of you.
Is the house shut? is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,
He will soon return, his messengers come anon,
When the exiles that pined away in distant lands and died have borne the fruit they died for.

Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?
Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground?
Lo, to God’s due occasion, uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,
And fills the earth with use and beauty.

I hear fierce French liberty songs,
O I think the east wind brings a grand march,
Triumphal and free march,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it.

The official relations of our states are with the reigning kings, queens, etc., of the Old World. But the only deep, vast, emotional, real affinity of America is with the cause of popular government there—and especially in France.
Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
I send these words to Paris with my love:
Bravo, Paris exposition,
Add to your show, before you close it, France,
Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid,
From fifty nations and nebulous nations, compacted, sent oversea today,
Applause, love, memories and good will.

O star of France, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes,
Of enthusiast’s dreams of brotherhood,
Of terror to the tyrant and the priest,
Beat back and baffled long!
We grandsons and great-grandsons do not forget your grandsires,
Thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price,
Thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains.

Dim smitten star,
Star panting o’er a land of death, heroic land,
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems today a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk.

Bear up O smitten orb!
The travail o’er, again thy star O France, lo! reborn, shall beam immortal,
In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever.
I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,
I wait with perfect trust, no matter how long,
And from today sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as for all lands.

To a foiled revolter or revoltress:
Keep on—O hope and faith!
Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from casual indifference,
Many’s the thing liberty has got to do before we have achieved liberty,
Some day we’ll make that word real—give it universal meanings.
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives! O many a sicken’d heart!
Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh,
For now, we must not give in.

Yet we must give in some,
We must grade our rebellion and our conformity, both,
(Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.)

Though not for us the joy of entering at the last the conquer’d city,
Not ours the chance ever to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid eclat of the democratic principle,
Filling the world with effulgence and majesty—
We throb with currents of attempt at least,
We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight.

There is yet the prophetic vision, the hardening of the strong campaign, the joy of being toss’d in the brave turmoil of these times—with the proud consciousness that amid whatever clouds, seductions, or heart-wearying postponements, we have never deserted, never despair’d, never abandon’d the faith.
Time is ample. Let the victors come after us.

 NEXT: RADICALISM AND REFORM

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