To The Bartholdi Statue

O Liberty, God-gifted,
Young and immortal maid,
In your high hand uplifted,
The torch declares your trade.

Its crimson menace, flaming
Upon the sea and shore,
Is, trumpet-like, proclaiming
That Law shall be no more.

Austere incendiary,
We're blinking in the light;
Where is your customary
Grenade of dynamite?

Where are your staves and switches
For men of gentle birth?
Your mask and dirk for riches?
Your chains for wit and worth?

Perhaps, you've brought the halters
You used in the old days,
When round religion's altars
You stabled Cromwell's bays?

Behind you, unsuspected,
Have you the axe, fair wench,
Wherewith you once collected
A poll-tax for the French?

America salutes you,
Preparing to "disgorge."
Take everything that suits you,
And marry Henry George.

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. He is best known for his enigmatic short stories and his satirical lexicon, 'The Devil's Dictionary.' Bierce's literary work often showcased his darkly cynical view of humanity. His disappearance in 1914 while traveling to Mexico remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in American literary history.

Ambrose Bierce

Freedom

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

The Statesmen

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

Alone

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

Decalogue

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

English

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The Bartholdi Statue

The land, that, from the rule of kings,
In freeing us, itself made free,
Our Old World Sister, to us brings
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty,

Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands
We rear the symbol free hands gave.

O France, the beautiful! to thee
Once more a debt of love we owe
In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
We hail a later Rochambeau!

Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth
Thy light and hope to all who sit
In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!

Reveal the primal mandate still
Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will
In signs of fire: "Let man be free!"

Shine far, shine free...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Freedom

Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.

She screams whenever monarchs meet,
And parliaments as well,
To bind the chains about her feet
And toll her knell.

And when the sovereign people cast
The votes they cannot spell,
Upon the pestilential blast
Her clamors swell.

For all to whom the power's given
To sway or to compel,
Among themselves apportion Heaven
And give her Hell.

Blary O'Gary.

Ambrose Bierce

The New Colossus.*

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.    From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips.    "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

*Written in aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund, 1883.

Emma Lazarus

The Statue Of Liberty

This statue of Liberty, busy man,
Here erect in the city square,
I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,
Strangely wistful,
And half tristful,
Have turned her from foul to fair;

With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
Bringing her out of the grime
That has smeared her during the smokes of winter
With such glumness
In her dumbness,
And aged her before her time.

You have washed her down with motherly care -
Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,
To the very hem of the robes that drape her -
All expertly
And alertly,
Till a long stream, black with soot,

Flows over the pavement to the road,
And her shape looms pure as snow:
I read you are hired by the City guardians -
May be yearly,
Or once merely -...

Thomas Hardy

The Statesmen

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage, see them jump,
And come down hard!

"Walk up, walk up!" each cries aloud,
"And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

"Beware the wiles of yonder quack
Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I, I alone can show that black
Is white as grass."

They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They'd make, I wish they'd go and make,
Of Heaven a Hell.

A advocates free silver, B
Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothe...

Ambrose Bierce

A Choral Ode To Liberty.

I.

    O sunlike Liberty, with eyes of flame,
    Mother and maid, immortal, man's delight!
    Fairest and first art thou in name and fame
    And none shall rob thee of thy vested right.
    Where is the man, though fifty times a king,
    Shall stay the tide, or countermand the spring?
    And where is he, though fifty times a knave,
    Shall track thy steps to cast thee in a grave?


II.

    Old as the sun art thou, and young as morn,
    And fresh as April when the breezes blow,
    And girt with glory like the growing corn,
    And undefiled like mountains made of snow.
    Oh, thou'rt the summer of the souls of men,
    And poor men's rights, approved by sword and pen,
    Are made self-certain as the day at noon,
    And fai...

Eric Mackay