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
or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power,
or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty
relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and
light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages
with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat ... the enemy triumphs
... the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold ...
the garrote and leadballs do their work ... the cause is asleep ... the strong
throats are choked with their own blood ... the young men drop their eyelashes
toward the ground when they pass each other ... and is liberty gone out of
that place? No never. When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the
second or the third to go ... it waits for all the rest to go ... it is the
last ... When memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away ... when the
large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of
the orators ... when the boys are no more christened after the same but
christened after tyrants and traitors instead ... when the laws of the free
are grudgingly permitted and laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to
the taste of the people ... when I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung
with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal
friendship and calling no man master--and when we are related with noble joy
at the sight of slaves ... when the soul retires in the cool communion of the
night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed
that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into
any cruel inferiority ... when those in all parts of these states who could
easier realize the true American character but do not yet--when the swarms of
cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions
for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the
judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural
deference from the people whether they get the offices or no ... when it is
better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the
poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm
eyes and a candid and generous heart ... and when servility by town or state
or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale
can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact
proportion against the smallest chance of escape ... or rather when all life
and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the
earth--then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of
the earth.
-- Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass (1st ed. 1855)
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Jon Corelis [log in to unmask]
www.geocities.com/joncpoetics
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