It is no more possible to be
Half Free than to be half Alive:²
This Freedom, this Liberty—is
Needful to man as Air, usable as Water.³
Despite the dead dream—
We see a Free Future.⁴
The Wings of the swallow tell us
Freedom is no accident.⁵
If we are Free in our Love,
And in our Soul are Free—
Angels alone, that Soar above—
Enjoy such Liberty.⁶
In some lands dark night and
Cold steel prevail—but the Dream
Will come back, and the Song Break its jail.⁷
Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound:
Roll through our ravished ears,
Say ye unto foul oppression:
Cease—ye tyrants rage no more!⁸
We Dance out their ordered sentences to Freedom—⁹
To-day we wear these chains and are here!
To-morrow we’ll be Fetterless—but Where?¹⁰
¹Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon
² Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait
³ Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass
⁴ Nikki Giovanni, They Clapped
⁵ Caroline S. Kotowicz, Ritual of Dreaming
⁶ Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison
⁷ Langston Hughes, Oppression
⁸ George Moses Horton, Liberty and Slavery
⁹ Ed Roberson, For Air
¹⁰ Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse