Freedom and Love

How delicious is the winning
Of a kiss at love's beginning,
When two mutual hearts are sighing
For the knot there's no untying!
Yet remember, 'Midst our wooing,
Love has bliss, but Love has ruing;
Other smiles may make you fickle,
Tears for other charms may...

Poet: Thomas Campbell
The Antiquity of Freedom

Here are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarlëd pines,
That stream with gray-green mosses, here the ground
Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up
Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet
To linger here, among the flitting birds
And leaping squirrels...

Poet: William Cullen Bryant
Freedom for the Mind

High walls and huge the body may confine,
And iron grates obstruct the prisoner’s gaze,
And massive bolts may baffle his design,
And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways:
Yet scorns the immortal mind this base control!
No chains can bind it, and no cell...

Poet: William Lloyd Garrison
A Stanza on Freedom

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right...

Poet: James Russell Lowell
Freedom in Dress

From “Epicœne; or, the Silent Woman,” Act I. Sc. 1.

STILL to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed,—
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all...

Poet: Ben Jonson
The Antiquity of Freedom

  HERE are old trees, tall oaks and gnarled pines,
That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground
Was never trenched by spade, and flowers spring up
Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet
To linger here, among the flitting birds,
And leaping...

Poet: William Cullen Bryant
“The hills were made for freedom”

When freedom from her home was driven,
  ’Mid vine-clad vales of Switzerland,
She sought the glorious Alps of heaven,
And there, ’mid cliffs by lightnings riven,
  Gathered her hero-band.

And still outrings her freedom-song,
  Amid the glaciers...

Poet: William Goldsmith Brown
Freedom of the Mind

Written While in Prison for Denouncing the Domestic Slave-Trade

HIGH walls and huge the body may confine,
  And iron gates obstruct the prisoner’s gaze,
And massive bolts may baffle his design,
  And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways;
But scorns the...

Poet: William Lloyd Garrison