John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Occasional PoemsThe Bartholdi Statue
T
In freeing us, itself made free,
Our Old World Sister, to us brings
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty:
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
On Freedom’s soil with freemen’s hands
We rear the symbol free hands gave.
Once more a debt of love we owe:
In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
We hail a later Rochambeau!
Thy light and hope to all who sit
In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!
Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
Trace on mid-air th’ Eternal Will
In signs of fire: “Let man be free!”
To Reason’s ways and Virtue’s aim,
A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
Who shields his license with thy name!