Brave New World
0 comment Saturday, September 13, 2014 |
Brave New World
But you, Thomas Jefferson,
You could not lie so still,
You could not bear the weight of stone
On the quiet hill,
You could not keep your green-grown peace
Nor hold your folded hand
If you could see your new world now,
Your new sweet land.
There was a time, Tom Jefferson,
When freedom made free men.
The new-found earth and the new-freed mind
Were brothers then.
There was a time when tyrants feared
The new world of the free.
Now freedom is afraid and shrieks
At tyranny.
Words have not changed their sense so soon
Nor tyranny grown new.
The truths you held, Tom Jefferson,
Will still hold true.
What's changed is freedom in this age.
What great men dared to choose
Small men now dare neither win
Nor lose.
Freedom, when men fear freedom's use
But love its useful name,
Has cause and cause enough for fear
And cause for shame.
...Freedom that was a thing to use
They've made a thing to save
And staked it in and fenced it round
Like a dead man's grave.
You, Thomas Jefferson,
You could not lie so still
You could not bear the weight of stone
On your green hill.
You could not hold your angry tongue
If you could see how bold
The old stale bitter world plays new--
And the new world old.
- Archibald MacLeish

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