Wherein are words sublime or noble? What <br />Invests one speech with haloed eminence, <br />Makes it the sesame for all doors shut, <br />Yet in its like sees but impertinence? <br />Is it the hue? Is it the cast of eye, <br />The curve of lip or Asiatic breath, <br />Which mark a lesser place for Gandhi’s cry <br />Than “Give me liberty or give me death!” <br /> <br />Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude, <br />So like its land enslaved, denied, and crude, <br />That men who claim they fight for liberty <br />Can hear this battle-shout impassively, <br />Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung <br />At those same words cried in the English tongue?<br /><br />Countee Cullen<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/karenge-ya-marenge/
