Lost Liberty

Of our own will we are not free,
    When freedom lies within our power.
    We wait for some decisive hour,
To rise and take our liberty.

Still we delay, content to be
    Imprisoned in our own high tower.
    What is it but a strong-built bower?
Ours are the warders, ours the key.

But we through indolence grow weak.
    Our warders, fed with power so long,
            Become at last our lords indeed.
We vainly threaten, vainly seek
    To move their ruth.    The bars are strong.
            We dash against them till we bleed.

Robert Fuller Murray

Robert Fuller Murray was a Scottish poet known for his lyrical and expressive poetry. Born on December 26, 1863, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, he moved to Scotland at a young age. Despite a short life, ending on April 15, 1894, Murray left a significant mark with his works, which often reflected themes of nature and human emotion. His poetry is characterized by its elegance and depth of feeling. Murray's influence remained through posthumous publications and collections of his poetry.

Robert Fuller Murray

A Lost Opportunity

Robert Fuller Murray, Simple Poetry

A Street Corner

Robert Fuller Murray, Simple Poetry

A College Career

Robert Fuller Murray, Simple Poetry

The City Of Golf

Robert Fuller Murray, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Liberty!

"Liberty!" Is that the cry, then?
    We have heard it oft of yore.
Once it had, we think, a meaning;
    Let us hear it now no more.

We have read what history tells us
    Of its heroes, martyrs too.
Doubtless they were very splendid,
    But they're not for me and you.

There were Greeks who fought and perished,
    Won from Persians deathless graves.
Had we lived then, we're aware that
    We'd have been those same Greeks' slaves!

Then a Roman came who loved us;
    Caesar gave men tongues and swords.
Crying "Liberty," they fought him,
    Cato and his cut-throat lords.

When he'd give a broader franchise,
    Lift the mangled nations bowed,
Crying "Liberty!" they killed him,
    Brutus and his pandar crowd.
...

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Liberty

When night and silence deep
Hold all the world in sleep,
As tho' Death claimed the Hour,
By some strange witchery
Appears her form to me,
As tho' Magic were her dow'r.

Her beauty heaven's light!
Her bosom snowy white!
But pale her cheek appears.
Her shoulders firm and fair;
A mass of gold her hair.
Her eyes--the home of tears.

She looks at me nor speaks.
Her arms are raised; she seeks
Her fettered hands to show.
On both white wrists a chain!--
She cries and pleads in pain:
"Unbind me!--Let me go!"

I burn with bitter ire,
I leap in wild desire
The cruel bonds to break;
But God! around the chain
Is coiled and coiled again
A long and loathsome snake.

I shout, I cry, I chide;
My voice goes far an...

Morris Rosenfeld

Europe, The 72nd And 73rd Years Of These States

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hand tight to the throats of kings.

O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many a sicken'd heart!
Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.

And you, paid to defile the People -- you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh'd at in the breaking,
Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorn'd the ferocity of kings.

But the sweet...

Walt Whitman

Liberty. - A Fragment.

    Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among,
    Thee, fam'd for martial deed and sacred song,
        To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
    Where is that soul of freedom fled?
    Immingled with the mighty dead!
        Beneath the hallow'd turf where Wallace lies!
    Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death!
        Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep;
        Disturb not ye the hero's sleep,
    Nor give the coward secret breath.
        Is this the power in freedom's war,
        That wont to bid the battle rage?
    Behold that eye which shot immortal hate,
        Crushing the despot's proudest bearing!

Robert Burns

The Sentence Of John L. Brown

Ho! thou who seekest late and long
A License from the Holy Book
For brutal lust and fiendish wrong,
Man of the Pulpit, look!
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,
This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;
And tell us how to heaven will rise
The incense of this sacrifice
This blossom of the gallows tree!
Search out for slavery's hour of need
Some fitting text of sacred writ;
Give heaven the credit of deed
Which shames the nether pit.
Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him
Whose truth is on thy lips a lie;
Ask that His bright winged cherubim
May bend around that scaffold grim
To guard and bless and sanctify.
O champion of the people's cause!
Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke
Of foreign wrong and Old World's laws,
Man of the Senate, look!
Was t...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Liberty.

What man is there so bold that he should say,
"Thus, and thus only, would I have the sea"?
For whether lying calm and beautiful,
Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back
The smile of heaven from waves of amethyst;
Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,
It bears the trade and navies of the world
To ends of use or stern activity;
Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way
To elemental fury, howls and roars
At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust
Of ruin drinks the blood of living things,
And strews its wrecks o'er leagues of desolate shore, -
Always it is the sea, and men bow down
Before its vast and varied majesty.

So all in vain will timorous ones essay
To set the metes and bounds of Liberty.
For Freedom is its own eternal law;
It make...

John Hay