And so I heard a voice say What is Freedom?

* * * * *

I have heard (it said) the lions roaring in their dens; I have seen the polyp stretching its arms upward from the floor of the deep;

I have heard the cries of slaves and the rattling of their chains, and the hoarse shout of victims rising against their oppressors; I have seen the deliverers dying calmly on the scaffold.

I have heard of the centuries-long struggle of nations for constitutional liberty—the step-by-step slowly-won approaches as to some inner and impregnable fastness;

I know the wars that have been waged, the flags flying to and fro over the earth; I know that one tyranny has been substituted for another, and that the forms of oppression have changed:

But what is Freedom?

* * * * *

Villeins and thralls become piece-men and day-tal men, and the bondsmen of the land become the bondsmen of Machinery and Capital; the escaped convicts of Labor fit admiringly the bracelets of Wealth round their own wrists.

I have seen the slaves of Opinion and Fashion, of Ignorance and of Learning, of Drink and Lust, of Chastity and Unchastity:

One skin cast leaves another behind, and that another, and that yet another;

I have seen over the world the daily fear of Death and Hell, of Pain and momentary overhanging Chance;

I have seen recluses craning their lives up into impossible heavens, thinkers hopelessly meditating after philosophic Truth, incurables lying covered with bed-sores, household drudges running from the hearth to the slopstone and from the slopstone to the hearth all their lives;

Something of all these slaveries I know—they are very well in their way—

But what is Freedom?

* * * * *

And I heard (in the height) another voice say:

I AM.

In the recluse, the thinker, the incurable and the drudge, I AM. I am the giver of Life, I am Happiness.

I am in the good and evil, in the fortunate and the unfortunate, in the gifted and the incapable, alike; I am not one more than the other.

The lion roaring in its den, and the polyp on the floor of the deep, the great deep itself, know ME.

The long advances of history, the lives of men and women —the men that scratched the reindeer and mammoth on bits of bone, the Bushmen painting their rude rock-paintings, the mud-hovels clustering round mediæval castles, the wise and kindly Arab with his loving boy-attendants, the Swiss mountain-herdsman, the Russian patriot, the English mechanic,

Know ME. I am Happiness in them, in all—underlying. I am the Master, showing myself from time to time as occasion serves.

I am not nearer to one than the other; they do not seek me so much as I advance through them.

* * * * *

Out of all would YOU emerge?

Would you at last, O child of mine, after many toils and endless warfare (for without such all is in vain) emerge and become MY EQUAL?

[Wonderful, wonderful is this that I tell you! Would you too become a Master—when you have seen and known all slaveries, and have ceased to put one before the other?]

Would you, whom I have often silently been with, to whom in the early morning I have come kissing you on the lips to leave Happiness for your waking, whom I have taught long and long my own ways, even for this—become my Equal? would you look me at last in the face?

* * * * *

It shall be then. The way is long but the centuries are long. Faint not. Does my voice sound distant? Faint not.

Even now for a moment round your neck, advancing, I stretch my arms; to my lips I draw you, I press upon your lips the seal of a covenant that cannot be forgotten.