In After Days

I WILL accomplish that and this, And make myself a thorn to Things– Lords, councillors and tyrant kings– Who sit upon their thrones and kiss The rod of Fortune; and are crowned The sovereign masters of the earth To scatter blight and death and dearth Wherever mortal man is found. I will do this and that, and break The backbone of their large conceit, And loose the sandals from their feet, And show 'tis holy ground they shake. So sang I in my earlier days, Ere I had learned to look abroad And see that more than monarchs trod Upon the form I fain would raise. Ere I, in looking toward the land That broke a triple diadem, That grasped at Freedom's garment hem, Had seen her, sword and torch in hand, A freedom-fool: ere I had grown To know that Love is freedom's strength– France taught the world that truth at length!– And Peace her chief foundation stone. Since then, I temper so my song That it may never speak for blood; May never say that ill is good; Or say that right may spring from wrong: Yet am what I have ever been– A friend of Freedom, staunch and true, Who hate a tyrant, be he–you– A people,–sultan, czar, or queen! And then the Freedom-haters came And questioned of my former song, If now I held it right, or wrong: And still my answer was the same:– The good still moveth towards the good: The ill still moveth towards the ill: But who affirmeth that we will Not form a nobler brotherhood When communists, fanatics, those Who howl their 'vives' to Freedom's name And yet betray her unto shame, Are dead and coffined with her foes.