THY error, Frémont, simply was to act <br />A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact, <br />And, taking counsel but of common sense, <br />To strike at cause as well as consequence. <br />Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn <br />At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown <br />Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own, <br />Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn! <br />It had been safer, doubtless, for the time, <br />To flatter treason, and avoid offence <br />To that Dark Power whose underlying crime <br />Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence. <br />But if thine be the fate of all who break <br />The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their years <br />Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make <br />A lane for freedom through the level spears, <br />Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee, <br />Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free! <br />The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear <br />Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear. <br />Who would recall them now must first arrest <br />The winds that blow down from the free Northwest, <br />Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back <br />The Mississippi to its upper springs. <br />Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack <br />But the full time to harden into things.<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-john-c-freemont/
