Maggie's Farm

From The Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass. h/t American Digest

“When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go . . it waits for all the rest to go . . it is the last. . .

When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away . . . .

When the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators . . . .

When the boys are no more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and traitors instead . . . .

When the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people . . . .

When I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master…

When we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves . . . .

When the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority . . . .

When those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—

When the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no . . . .

When it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart . . . .

And when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape . . . .

Or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—

Then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.