The Chapel of Tell (On the Lake of Lucerne)

ON this green platform with its chapel small

Embowered, the centre of the mountain land,

Take, holy Freedom, take for aye thy stand;

And hither from all regions ever call

Thy sons to thy perpetual festival,

Or bid them drink, a sacramental band,

From Grütli’s founts that rose at thy command,

There where the three deliverers vowed the fall

Of Power unjust. Night heard those whispered tones:

Have they not found large echoes in the world?

Have they not been like God’s own thunder hurled

In ruin down on all opprobrious thrones?

All sway that, deifying lawless might,

On that doth build, and not on God and on the right?