Read "A Retrograde" by Helen Gray Cone online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
OBERON
"What, you! " his comrades cried, "who led us long / Against the dense arrays of dullards' thought, / You quit us on the march, so quickly caught / By such a strain, a simple peasant-song? / That breath of old brown earth is strangely strong, / To lure you to the fields where hinds untaught / Toil slavish, or by common coinage bought, / Or meanly fearful of the Master's thong!"
"Yea, dear the song,-although I may not sing; / Yea, dear the soil,-although I delve it not! / I fall not back, but peaceful pass beyond. / For freedom's sake your hearts are fiery-hot, / Yet through the tramp I hear your fetters ring! / Denial is the straitest kind of bond. "