Law and Liberty

Symbol of rolling liberty

This wave’s exact curl

And dash upon the shore

Is no stampede of freedom:

Or deeper where the shark

Slides silent in the water

His fanged tyranny

Has not the sea’s licence:

Tide’s thrust and pulling gravity

Arrayed each molecule 

Of the breaker’s curl

In precise delineation

Of its smash upon the sand

While shark is most subject

To sea’s voracious law

Shaping his deadly torpedo

Whose unhindered motion

Is desperate necessity – 

He must swim or die.

So our thinking freedom

Lives by its limits:

This skater accepts the ice

With its bruising treachery,

Subdues herself to it

In months of wearing and

Gradually prolongs a curve

Or risks a flick –

Then can exploit the ice

Swooping in its pale sky

With our dreams of flight

With glide and dizzying spin

She has the freedom of the ice.

So the unstinting Giver

Neither shackles freedom in necessity

Nor unmakes order through licence

For His full majesty

Is His all-mastery

And our full liberty.