Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/236

198 May strike to those whose red right hands have bought

Rights cheaply earned 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,

Dammed 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 extinguished 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!