If you can see within yourself,
to discover the nature of your being,
dislodge the shackles of slavery,
and know what hides the truth,
perhaps the way to freedom
unto you may be revealed.

And yet are there not those
who may enjoy their fetters?
Those to whom liberty
is nothing more than loss?
Those for whom freedom
may exist only in *******?

For such sad creatures
liberty implies responsibility
and if prepared to pay the price,
those others who would curtail freedom
may find the shackles not enough,
whilst being free is being lost.

The liberty in an instant gained,
may be abandoned in an hour.
A state achieved too easily,
inevitably is poorly prized.
Those who claim to favour freedom
must be prepared to give it up.

Freedom can, like power, corrupt.
The liberty to live one’s life
oblivious to temptation,
implies a generosity of love:
to say that “I will give to you
what I would willingly deny myself.”

Freedom is as freedom does,
the tree of liberty must be refreshed
as Jefferson informed us
with blood of patriots and tyrants.
Freedom has to be, it must be said
and must remain, unfinished business.