Freedom
Freedom - meaning Summary
Freedom as Inward Power
Emerson’s poem rejects grand public proclamations of freedom and locates liberty as an inner, almost sacred power. The speaker reports a Spirit advising restraint: freedom is too precious for boastful speech and is revealed through bodily feeling and moral urgency. To find it, one must not consult others or wait for comfort; when one recognizes what is right, one should act immediately. Freedom thus combines spiritual illumination with prompt ethical action.
Read Complete AnalysesOnce I wished I might rehearse Freedom's paean in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain Should throb until he snapped his chain. But the Spirit said, 'Not so; Speak it not, or speak it low; Name not lightly to be said, Gift too precious to be prayed, Passion not to be expressed But by heaving of the breast: Yet,--wouldst thou the mountain find Where this deity is shrined, Who gives to seas and sunset skies Their unspent beauty of surprise, And, when it lists him, waken can Brute or savage into man; Or, if in thy heart he shine, Blends the starry fates with thine, Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, And makes thy thoughts archangels be; Freedom's secret wilt thou know?-- Counsel not with flesh and blood; Loiter not for cloak or food; Right thou feelest, rush to do.'
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