Houses we will build you, food and clothing find you,
You shall share in all that is ours.
Why do you frighten us, white men, white men?
Can you not be friends for a day?
Souls are like the sea-birds, flying, flying,
Borne by the sea-wind away.
Why do you chain us in the mines of the mountains?
Why do you hunt us with your hounds?
We who were so free, are we evermore to be
Prisoned in your narrow hateful bounds?
One escape is left us, white men, white men,--
You cannot forbid our souls to fly
To the stars of freedom, far beyond the sunset,--
We whom you have captured can die!
VI
LOCKED HARBORS
"But of what use is a King's patent," said Hugh Thorne of Bristol, "if
the harbors be locked?"
The Italian merchant glanced up from his papers and smiled, which was
all the answer the Englishman seemed to expect, for he stormed on, "Here
have we better fleeces than Spain, better wheat than France, finer
cattle than the Netherlands, the tin of Cornwall, the flax of Kent and
Durham, and our people starve or live rudely because of the fettering of
our trade."
"'T is a sad misfortune," said the merchant. "In a world so great as
this there is surely room for all to work and all to get reward for
their labor.
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