86 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS

When a Deed is Done For Freedom

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.
For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,
Round the Earth's electric circle* the swift flash of right or wrong j
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 for ever twixt that darkness and that light.
Hast thou chosen, 0 my people, on whose party thou shalt stand
Ere the Boom 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 enshicld her from all wrong,
Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness twixt old systems and the Word ;
Truth for ever on the scaffold. Wrong for ever on the throne —
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Russell Lowell

La Belle Dame Sam Herd
MY heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes
so far off, whom I have followed so many years with so great
love and desire in so many journeys, and am now left behind her in a
dark prison all alone. While she was yet near at hand that I might
hear of her in two or three days my sorrows were less, but even now
my heart is cast into the depths of all misery.
I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like
Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair
about her pure cheeks like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade
Mke a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing
like Orpheus ! Behold the sorrow of this world !
She is gone ia whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of
mercy, nor any respect of that that was*
Sir Walter Bakigh writing from
ike Tower to Robert Cedl