It is no more Possible to be
Half Free than to be Half Alive²
If I have Freedom in my Love and
In my Soul am Free – Angels alone,
That Soar above, enjoy such Liberty³
Come Liberty, thou Cheerful sound: Roll
Through my Ravished Ears, say ye unto Foul
Oppression, Cease – ye Tyrants Rage no more⁴
Dance out their Ordered Sentences to Freedom⁵
Liberty relies upon Itself, invites no one, promises
Nothing, sits in Calmness & Light, is Positive &
Composed – and knows no Discouragement⁶
To-day I Wear these Chains and am Here!
To-morrow I’ll be Fetterless – but Where?⁷
Not Freedom from Conditions: Freedom
To take a Stand toward the Conditions⁸
This Freedom, this Liberty – Needful
To humanity as Air, Usable as Water⁹
The Wings of the Swallow tell
Me Freedom is no Accident¹⁰
¹ Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon
² Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait
³ Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison
⁴ George Moses Horton, Liberty and Slavery
⁵ Ed Roberson, For Air
⁶ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
⁷ Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
⁸ Viktor E. Frankl tr. Ilse Lasch, Man’s Search for Meaning
⁹ Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass
¹⁰ Caroline S. Kotowicz, Ritual of Dreaming