Utah Phillips , Sedition [via Facebook]
So I hope you’ve all fucked off work and burned a flag today in honor of “Loyalty Day.” Here’s a poetical reading for the occasion:
“SEDITION.”
Edmund Vance Cooke (1920)
You cannot salt the eagle’s tail,
Nor limit thought’s dominion;
You cannot put ideas in jail;
You can’t deport opinion.
If any cause be dross and lies,
Then drag it to the light;
Out in the sunshine evil dies,
But fattens on the night.
You cannot make a truth untrue
By dint of legal fiction;
You cannot prison human view;
You can’t convict conviction.
For though by thumbscrew and by rack,
By exile and by prison,
Truth has been crushed and palled in black,
Yet Truth has always risen.
You cannot quell a vicious thought
Except that thought be free;
Gag it, and you will find it taught
On every land and sea.
Truth asks no favor for her blade
Upon the field with Error,
Nor are her converts ever made
By threat of force and terror.
You cannot salt the eagle’s tail,
Nor limit thought’s dominion;
You cannot put ideas in jail;
You can’t deport opinion.
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