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Freedom

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 21, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 20.

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Freedom

By James Russell Lowell

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the past, While petty cares, and crawling interests, twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind? Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future like a tide. No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. — James Russell Lowell.