`OH, WHAT A PROBLEM! WORDS OF FREEDOM: PURE POETRY.

Byline: MAXINE FLAM  Local View

THE other night my mother showed me a book of poetry she bought when she was a young girl. The book was worn, the binding torn, but I could make out the title: ``One Hundred and One Famous Poems.''

All the greats were there, including Shakespeare and Longfellow -- and Patrick Henry and Abraham Lincoln.

The last entry was ``The Declaraion of Independence,'' which I had read back in school, but that was many years ago. I was fascinated with the language:

``We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.''

Later the Declaration states, ``The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.''

Repeated injuries? A tyranny? Powerful stuff. The Declaration continues to state the founders' reasons for declaring independence from Great Britain. The grievances go on for two and a half pages. Poetry, indeed.

Three other works in the book referenced our nation's founding. The first was ``Paul Revere's Ride'' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, ``If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--

One if by land, and two if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm.''

Here was a man ready to ride to alert the townspeople to arm themselves against the British. Just common ``country folk.''

The second poem was ``The War Inevitable March 1775'' by Patrick Henry. He predicted the Revolutionary War and wrote an essay about it. He uttered the famous words, ``I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!''

All of these men were willing to die to be free. Since the Revolutionary War, Americans have always laid down their lives for freedom. At this very moment, our soldiers are in Iraq and Afghanistan laying down their lives in the war against terrorism.

The last poem was actually a short speech. It was the Gettysburg Address written by Abraham Lincoln and delivered during the Civil War. It begins:

``Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.'' Lincoln was president, presiding during a civil war that pitted brother against brother, trying to save the union. The speech concluded with the plea ``that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.''

Much blood has been shed to allow us to have this holiday. On this Independence Day, no matter what you are doing, remember Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and other framers who went forth into unknown territory, knowing they were about to go to war so the 13 colonies could be free. And remember the soldiers who gave their lives for the past 230 years to protect this freedom.