{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_The_Reciter_Tell_s_speech/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_The_Reciter_Tell_s_speech","id":"wikisource_The_Reciter_Tell_s_speech","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Reciter/Tell's_speech","summary":null,"tags":["Adventure","Chapbooks","Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Pages_with_contributor","Scottish_poetry","Subpages","Works_using_categories_parameter"],"text":"\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\nTELL'S SPEECH.\n\nYe crag's and peaks, I'm with you once again!\n\nI hold to you the hands you first beheld,\n\nTo show they still are free. Methinks I hear\n\nA spirit in your echoes answer me,\n\nAnd bid your tenant welcome to his home\n\nAgain!- O sacred forms, how proud you look!\n\nHow high you lift your heads into the sky!\n\nHow huge you are! how mighty and how free!\nYe are the things that tower, that shine-whose smile\n\nMakes glad---whose frown is terrible---whose forms,\n\nRobed or unrobed, do all the impress wear\n\nOf awe divine. Ye guards of liberty\n\nI'm with you once again!---I call to you\n\nWith all my voice!---I hold my hands to you\n\nTo show they still are free. I rush to you\n\nAs though I could embrace you\u00a0!\n\nScaling yonder peak,\n\nI saw an eagle wheeling near its brow\n\nO'er the abyss:---his broad-expanded wings\n\nLay calm and motionless upon the air,\n\nAs if he floated there without their aid,\n\nBy the sole act of his unlorded will,\n\nThat buoy'd him proudly up. Instinctively\n\nI bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still\n\nHis airy circle, as in the delight\n\nOf measuring the ample range beneath,\n\nAnd round about absorb'd, he heeded not\n\nThe death that threaten'd him.--- I could not shoot---\n\n'Twas liberty!--- I turned my bow aside,\n\nAnd let him soar away!\n\nHeavens, with what pride I used\n\nTo walk these hills and look up to my God\n\nAnd bless him that it was so. It was free---\n\nFrom end to end, from cliff to lake 'twas free!\n\nFree as our torrents are that leap our rocks,\n\nAnd plough our valleys, without asking leave;\n\nOr as our peaks that wear their caps of snow,\n\nIn very presence of the regal sun.\n\nHow happy was it then! I loved\n\nIts very storms. Yes, Emma, I have sat\n\nIn my boat at night, when, midway o'er the lake,\n\nThe stars went out, and down the mountain gorge\nThe wind came roaring. I have sat and eyed\n\nThe thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled\n\nTo see him shake his lightnings o'er my head,\n\nAnd think I had no master save his own.\n\nYou know the jutting cliff round which a track\n\nUp hither winds, whose base is but the brow\n\nTo such another one, with scanty room\n\nFor two a-breast to pass? O'ertaken there\n\nBy the mountain blast, I've laid me flat along,\n\nAnd while gust followed gust more furiously,\n\nAs if to sweep me o'er the horrid brink\n\nAnd I have thought of other lands, whose storms\n\nAre summer flaws to those of mine, and just\n\nHave wished me there---the thought that mine was free\n\nHas check'd that wish, and I have raised my head,\n\nAnd cried in thraldom to that furious wind,\n\nBlow on! This is the land of liberty!","title":"The Reciter/Tell's speech","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":478}