Freedom

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I care not who were vicious back of me,
No shadow of their sins on me is shed.

My will is greater than heredity,
I am no worm to feed upon the dead.

My face, my form, my gestures and my voice,
May be reflections from a race that was.
But this I know, and knowing it, rejoice,
I am myself a part of the Great Cause.

I am a spirit! Spirit would suffice,
If rightly used, to set a chained world free.
Am I not stronger than a mortal vice
That crawls the length of some ancestral tree?