To John C. Fremont

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