The storm-winds wildly blowing,
The bursting billows mock,
As with their foam-crests glowing,
They dash the sea-girt rock;
Amid the wild commotion,
The revel of the sea,
A voice is on the ocean,
Be free, O man, be free.
Behold the sea-brine leaping
High in the murky air;
List to the tempest sweeping
In chainless fury there.
What moves the mighty torrent,
And bids it flow abroad?
Or turns the rapid current?
What, but the voice of God?
Then, answer, is the spirit
Less noble or less free?
From whom does it inherit
The doom of slavery?
When man can bind the waters,
That they no longer roll,
Then let him forge the fetters
To clog the human soul.
Till then a voice is stealing
From earth and sea and sky,
And to the soul revealing
Its immortality.
The swift wind chants the numbers
Careering o’er the sea,
And earth, aroused from slumbers,
Re-echoes, “Man be free.”