When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
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Comments
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In this poem, freedom is both "beautiful? and a "terrible thing". Can anyone explain the exact meaning fo this patadox?
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i really like this poem too.. i am here because my teacher assigned him to me to do a project.. and i really enjoy readin his poems.. i would like to learn more about Robert Hayden..
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I really like this... of course, I am partial to free-verse, but I thought this was really interesting. I'm pretty sure it's a sonnett- but I know it's not Shakespearian and I can't remember how a patrarchian sonnett is constructed- can sonnetts be free-form?
Anyway, I really liked the theme of this poem: that civil rights leaders (such as Fredereick Douglas) are remembered, 'not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone' but through the impact they have on other's lives.
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