The Garden of Years and Other Poems/Rex Captivus

Americans if ye be, who stand surrounding my prison, Has the sight of me, caged and cowed, no hint of the past to say, Of the days when ye chose me symbol of Freedom the New-arisen? Free ye found me, and King ye crowned me, And what is your King to-day? Shackled for fools to laugh at, shorn of defence and defiance, Tainted and reeking with filth in this barred, unspeakable slough, Behold the sign of a creed divine, the bird of your faith’s reliance! Polluted and shamed, the King ye acclaimed Recalls your allegiance now !

Born to be Prince of the Air, and the great Sun’s peer and brother, Who alone might meet his eye in the infinite heights of blue, Butt of the vulgar and lewd, in the ruck of my pen I smother: Yet King! Ye have said it! Is my discredit Not greater disgrace for you? Men—if ye still be men, not blind, unreasoning cattle— See what the work of your hands hath made of the work of God! These tabid things were once such wings as flash on your flags in battle, And benisons put on every foot Of your hardly-ransomed sod!

To me the faith of your fathers its resolute eyes uplifted, I poised on your earliest banners, I routed your youngest foe, I was borne in your van of late, where the Spanish smoke-bank drifted:— Is all forgotten, that, smirched and rotten, You make of me squalid show? I am stained with blood of your sons, and armored with prayers of your daughters, To me your defenders point as sign of their aim most true, On the prows of your mail-clad ships I sail to guard your conquered waters: O sons of the West, will ye sully your crest With this hideous thing ye do?

Nay ! By the oath ye swore, by the pledge of your ancient duty, By the blood ye spilled for my honor, I bid you to bend the knee! Yield me my place again, in its purity, pride, and beauty! Men of my nation, is this my station? I summon you, set me free! Let there be one rift in the cloud of man’s world-wide dominion, One thing of all breathing things that he bids no hand molest! Let Liberty’s sky be hallowed by the beat of the eagle’s pinion, By her sons released, from the earliest east To the shores of the farthest west!

Else am I king no more, acclaimed of bugle and tymbal; No longer Bird of the Free, but, palsied, defiled, and sore; Leave me to dream on the days when ye hailed me Liberty’s symbol, On how I led you, to victory sped you, And how ye are mine no more! Are ye blind, American men, that ye pass me, caged and pining? Are ye deaf, American men, to that daring and distant cry, The cheer of your sons, above their guns, for the bird on your banners shining, For the world to see?—Ah, God of the Free, That symbol and sign am I!, 1901.