Page:Mazeppa (1819).djvu/62

 Yet rears her crest, unconquer’d and sublime, Above the far Atlantic!—She has taught Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, The floating fence of Albion’s feebler crag, May strike to those whose red right hands have bought Rights cheaply earn’d with blood. Still, still, for ever Better, though each man’s life-blood were a river, That it should flow, and overflow, than creep Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, Damm’d like the dull canal with locks and chains, And moving, as a sick man in his sleep, Three paces, and then faltering:—better be Where the extinguish’d Spartans still are free, In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ, Than stagnate in our marsh,—or o’er the deep Fly, and one current to the ocean add, One spirit to the souls our fathers had, One freeman more, America, to thee!