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 immortal mind such base control: 
    No chains can bind it and no cell enclose. 
  Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole,
    And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes. 
  It leaps from mount to mount; from vale to vale
    It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers;
  It visits home to hear the fireside tale
    And in sweet converse pass the joyous hours;
  ’Tis up before the sun, roaming afar,
  And in its watches wearies every star.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

* * * * *

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

  When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching
          breast
  Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
  And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
  To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
  Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

  Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,
  When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;
  At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
  Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart. 
  And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s
          heart.

  So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
  Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
  And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God
  In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,
  Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

  For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,
  Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flush of right or
          wrong;
  Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame
  Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;—­
  In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

  Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
  In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
  Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or
          blight,
  Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
  And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness and that light.

  Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,
  Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? 
  Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet ’tis Truth alone is strong,
  And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
  Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.