Song of the Emancipated

The days of our bondage are o'er!
     Our fetters are riven in twain! 
The scourge that so oft has been wet in our gore
     Shall never insult us again! 
No longer we bow to the tyrant's control, 
His chains have we broken from body and soul.

We are free as the breezes that sweep
     O'er the hills and the vales of the North!
As the waves of the sea that exultingly leap 
     When the breath of the tempest goes forth !
Till the despot can fetter the winds and the main,
Our necks to his thralldom we bend not again !

We are free! and O sooner by far
     Would we pour out the blood from our veins
In the strife for the right, 'mid the horrors of war, 
     Than resume the disgrace of our chains.
For our freedom or death, for our rights or our graves,
We will suffer and dare; but we will not be slaves!

They may press with their hounds on our track;
     They may bribe with their ill-gotten gold 
Their serviles to thrust us insultingly back,
     Like beasts in the mart to be sold. 
In vain! we remember the oath we have sworn, 
And hurl in their faces defiance and scorn.

Woe, woe, to the tyrants! and woe
     To the land that oppression hath cursed! 
The burning volcanoes are rumbling below,
     And even in their fury shall burst! 
And the vengeance held back through the darkness of years 
Shall be poured forth in torrents of blood and of tears !

They shall think in that terrible hour
     Of the wrongs they have heaped on our race,
When the trampled of ages shall rise in their power 
     The tramplers to hurl from their place;
Asserting the manhood their spoilers deny,
And rending the air with their jubilant cry.