Is true Freedom but to break
          Fetters for our own dear sake,
          And, with leathern hearts forget
          That we owe mankind a debt? 
          No! true freedom is to share
          All the chains our brothers wear,
          And, with heart and hand, to be
          Earnest to make others free!

          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 with two or three.

THE COORTIN’.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

        God makes sech nights, all white an’ still
          Fur’z you can look or listen,
        Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,
          All silence an’ all glisten.

        Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown,
          An’ peeked in thru’ the winder;
        An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
          ’Ith no one nigh to hender.

        A fireplace filled the room’s one side,
          With half a cord o’ wood in;
        There warn’t no stoves (tell comfort died)
          To bake ye to a puddin’.

        The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out
          Towards the pootiest, bless her! 
        An’ leetle flames danced all about
          The chiny on the dresser.

        Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,
          Ah’ in amongst em rusted
        The ole queen’s-arm that gran’ther Young
          Fetched back from Concord busted.

        The very room, coz she was in,
          Seemed warm from floor to ceilin’,
        An’ she looked full ez rosy agin
          Ez the apples she was peelin’.

        ‘Twas kin’ o’ kingdom-come to look
          On sech a blessed cretur;
        A dogrose blushin’ to a brook
          Ain’t modester nor sweeter.

        He was six foot o’ man, A1,
          Clean grit an’ human natur’;
        None couldn’t quicker pitch a ton,
          Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,
He’d squired ’em, danced ’em, druv ’em,
Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells—­
All is, he wouldn’t love ’em.

But ‘long o’ her his veins ’ould run
All crinkly like curled maple;
The side she breshed felt full o’ sun
Ez a south slope in Ap’il.

She thought no v’ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir: 
My! when he made Ole Hundred ring,
She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An’ she’d blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin’-bunnet
Felt somehow thru’ its crown a pair
O’ blue eyes sot upon it.