FREEDOM
Out
of the heart of the city begotten
Of the
labour of men and their manifold hands,
Whose souls, that were sprung from the earth in her
morning,
No longer regard or remember her warning,
Whose hearts in the furnace
of care have forgotten
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Forever
the scent and the hue of her lands;
Out
of the heat of the usurer’s hold,
From
the horrible crash of the strong man’s feet;
Out of the shadow were pity is dying;
Out of the clamour where beauty is lying,
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Dead in the depth of the struggle
for gold;
Out
of the din and the glare of the street;
Into
the arms of our mother we come,
Our
broad strong mother, the innocent earth,
Mother of all things beautiful, blameless,
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Mother of hopes that her strength makes tameless,
Where the voices of grief and
of battle are dumb,
And
the whole world laughs with the light of her mirth.
Over
the fields, where the cool winds sweep,
Black
with the mould and brown with the loam,
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Where the thin green spears of the wheat are appearing,
And the high-ho shouts from the smoky clearing;
Over the widths, where the cloud
shadows creep;
Over
the fields and the fallows we come;
Over
the swamps with their pensive noises,
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Where
the burnished cup of the marigold gleams;
Skirting the reeds, where the quick winds shiver
On the swelling breast of the dimpled river,
And the blue of the king-fisher
hangs and poises,
Watching
a spot by the edge of the streams;
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By
the miles of the fences warped and dyed
With
the white-hot noons and their withering fires,
Where the rough bees trample the creamy bosoms
Of the hanging tufts of the elder blossoms,
And the spiders weave, and the
grey snakes hide,
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In the
crannied gloom of the stones and the briers;
Over
the meadow land sprouting with thistle,
Where
the humming wings of the blackbirds pass,
Where the hollows are banked with the violets flowering,
And the long-limbed pendulous elms are towering,
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Where the robins are loud with
their voluble whistle,
And
the ground sparrow scurries away through the grass,
Where
the restless bobolink loiters and woos
Down
in the hollows and over the swells,
Dropping in and out of the shadows,
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Sprinkling his music about the meadows,
Whistles and little checks and
coos,
And
the tinkle of glassy bells;
Into
the dim woods full of the tombs
Of the
dead trees soft in their sepulchres,
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Where the pensive throats of the shy birds hidden,
Pipe to us strangely entering unbidden,
And tenderly still in the tremulous
glooms
The
trilliums scatter their white-winged stars;
Up
to the hills where our tired hearts rest,
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Loosen,
and halt, and regather their dreams;
Up to the hills, where the winds restore us,
Clearing our eyes to the beauty before us,
Earth with the glory of life
on her breast,
Earth
with the gleam of her cities and streams.
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Here
we shall commune with her and no other;
Care
and the battle of life shall cease;
Men her degenerate children behind us,
Only the might of her beauty shall bind us,
Full of rest, as we gaze on
the face of our mother,
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Earth
in the health and the strength of her peace.
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