The hands that feed it? This whose rancorous sting
Is uncontrolled by reason? Red and gory,
The standard it uplifts on land and sea
Reveals it truly, hell-born Anarchy!
Which borrows for its shame a name of glory.
Freedom disdains the cruel and the base,
Their praise she deems inexpiable wrong,
And in the homage of their savage song
She hears the voice of insult and disgrace.
Scorning the ransomed slaves who rule no better
Than the oppressors they in wrath hurl down,
Who make the Phrygian cap a despot's crown,
And others with their broken shackles fetter—
She leaves them to the evils they invoke;
And listening to the voices of the wild,—
As listens for the mother's voice her child,—
Courting the tempest and the lightning-stroke,
She opens to the void her pinions regal:
The clouds, the skies, she knows to be her own,
And rising to the mountain-summits lone,
She rests where rock the eyries of the eagle!
