'LIBERTY?' Is that the cry, then? <br />We have heard it oft of yore. <br />Once it had, we think, a meaning; <br />Let us hear it now no more. <br />We have read what history tells us <br />Of its heroes, martyrs too. <br />Doubtless they were very splendid, <br />But they're not for me and you. <br />There were Greeks who fought and perished, <br />Won from Persians deathless graves. <br />Had we lived then, we're aware that <br />We'd have been those same Greeks' slaves! <br />Then a Roman came who loved us; <br />Caesar gave men tongues and swords. <br />Crying 'Liberty,' they fought him, <br />Cato and his wild-beast lords. <br />When he'd give a broader franchise, <br />Lift the mangled nations bowed, <br />Crying 'Liberty!' they killed him, <br />Brutus and his cut-throat crowd. <br />We have read what history tells us, <br />O the truthful memory clings! <br />Tacitus, the chartered liar, <br />Gloating over poisoned kings! <br />'Liberty!' The stale cry echoes <br />Past smug homesteads, tinsel thrones, <br />Over smoking fields and hovels, <br />Murdered peasants' bleaching bones. <br />That's the cry that mocked us madly, <br />Toiling in our living graves, <br />When hell-mines sent up the chorus; <br />'Britons never shall be slaves!' <br />'Liberty!' We care not for it! <br />What we care for's food, clothes, homes, <br />For our dear ones, toiling, waiting <br />For the time that never comes!<br /><br />Francis William Lauderdale Adams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/liberty-23/
