Page:Theatrical speaker (1).pdf/9



Ye crags and peaks, I’m with you once again!

I hold to you the hands you first beheld,

To show they still are free. Methinks I hear

A spirit in your echoes answer me,

And bid your tenant welcome to his home

Again!—O sacred forms, how proud you look!

How high you lift your heads into the sky!

How huge you are! how mighty and how free!

Ye are the things that tower, that shine—whose smile

Makes glad—whose frown is terrible—whose forms,

Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear

Of awe divine. Ye guards of liberty,

I‘m with you once again!—I call to you

With all my voice!—I hold my hands to you

To show they still are free, I rush to you

As though I could embrace you!

Scaling yonder peak,

I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow

0‘er the abyss:— his broad-expanded wings

Lay calm and motionless upon the air,

As if he floated there without their aid,

By the sole act of his unlorded will

That buoy‘d him proudly up. Instinctively

I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still

His airy circle, as in the delight

Of measuring the ample range beneath

And round about absorb’d, he heeded not

The death that threaten’d him.—I could not shoot;—

‘Twas liberty!—I turned my bow aside,

And let him soar away!

Heavens, with what pride I used