9
tell's speech.
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!
