Free-Song on the Potomac

Ho, Crape and Tinsel! will ye stop 
    The swelling tide of Freedom’s song,
Even while the Judgement Hour lets drop
    God’s lightning on the towers of wrong!—
Forbid the fearless free who fling
    Their lives on battle’s combing wave
To hear their Mountain Warblers sing
    Our ransom with the ransomed slave?
But Truth divine can pass your line
Without your word and countersign;
    The winds will wing it,
    The birds will sing it,
    The seas will ring it,
The shouting brooks from the hills will bring it
And your shattering cannon-peal shall fling it
    Whatever a slave may pine!

Sweet songsters of the Graine Hills,
    Birds of the rocks and forest oak,
Wild-bubbling as their own free rills
    Their music, through the cannon-smoke,
Rained like the skylark’s from her cloud;
    And might have laid the fiend of Saul,
But makes your haunting fiend more loud!
    Whose javelin seeks the life of all.
Unjustly strong, from out your throng!
Ye drive the Flock, but not the Song!
    The wind will wing it,
    The birds will sing it,
    The seas will ring it,
The shouting brooks from the hills will bring it,
And the scream of your roaring shells will fling it
    Wherever the weak bears wrong.

Not clanging horns nor rumbling drums
    The tones that deepest thrill the land;
The Resurrection Angel comes
    With Freedom’s trumpet in her hand!
Its blast will call the living dead,
    Redeemed, from slavery’s Hadean tomb,
To find our welcome; — or instead
    Peal the last charge of flying Doom!
The hour of Fate will never wait,
Ye hear its judgement knell too late.
    The winds will wing it, 
    The birds will sing it,
    The seas will ring it,
The shouting brooks from the hills will bring it,
And a nation’s dying groan shall fling it
    Through the shattered prison-gate!

Once old chivalric honor reigned,
    And Bards were sacred, e’on to foes;
They kept the glory heroes gained,
    And sang high deeds that shamed repose.
But cheer, my Warblers! fly away
    To sing more clear in smokeless air;
The herald Angels sing to-day,
    Nor ask a tinseled tyrant where.
From heaven’s blue cope the song of hope
Thrills down the bondman’s dungeon slope;
    The wings will wing it,
    The birds will sing it,
    The seas will ring it,
The shouting brooks from the hills will bring it,
And a rescued nation’s voice shall fling it.
    Where the last lone slave may grope.