Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Sonnet to Liberty (Author: Oscar Wilde)

p.693

1. • 1] Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
     2] See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
     3] Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—
     4] But that the roar of thy Democracies,
     5] Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
     6] Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
     7] And give my rage a brother——! Liberty!
     8] For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
   • 9] Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
     10] By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
     11] Rob nations of their rights inviolate
     12] And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,
     13] These Christs that die upon the barricades,
     14] God knows it I am with them, in some things.