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 makes its own conditions, and in storm
  Or calm alike fulfils the unerring Will. 
  Let us not then despise it when it lies
  Still as a sleeping lion, while a swarm
  Of gnat-like evils hover round its head;
  Nor doubt it when in mad, disjointed times
  It shakes the torch of terror, and its cry
  Shrills o’er the quaking earth, and in the flame
  Of riot and war we see its awful form
  Rise by the scaffold, where the crimson axe
  Rings down its grooves the knell of shuddering kings. 
  For ever in thine eyes, O Liberty,
  Shines that high light whereby the world is saved,
  And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee!

JOHN HAY.

* * * * *

PATIENCE.

FROM “POEMS OF FREEDOM.”

  Be patient, O be patient!  Put your ear against the earth;
  Listen there how noiselessly the germ o’ the seed has birth;
  How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way
  Till it parts the scarcely-broken ground, and the blade stands up in
          the day.

  Be patient, O be patient! the germs of mighty thought
  Must have their silent undergrowth, must underground be wrought;
  But, as sure as ever there’s a Power that makes the grass appear,
  Our land shall be green with Liberty, the blade-time shall be here.

  Be patient, O be patient! go and watch the wheat-ears grow,
  So imperceptibly that ye can mark nor change nor throe: 
  Day after day, day after day till the ear is fully grown;
  And then again day after day, till the ripened field is brown.

  Be patient, O be patient! though yet our hopes are green,
  The harvest-field of Freedom shall be crowned with the sunny sheen. 
  Be ripening, be ripening! mature your silent way
  Till the whole broad land is tongued with fire on Freedom’s harvest
          day.

WILLIAM JAMES LINTON.

* * * * *

THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM.

    Here are old trees, tail 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 squirrels, wandering brooks,