The Task: Book V (excerpt on Liberty)

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower

Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,

And we are weeds without it. All constraint,

Except what wisdom lays on evil men,

Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes

Their progress in the road of science; blinds

The eyesight of discovery, and begets,

In those that suffer it, a sordid mind

Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit

To be the tenant of man's noble form.

But there is yet a liberty unsung

By poets, and by senators unprais'd,

Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rs

Of earth and hell confederate take away;

A liberty which persecution, fraud,

Oppression, prisons, have no pow'r to bind;

Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more.

'Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from Heav'n,

Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind,

And seal'd with the same token. It is held

By charter, and that charter sanction'd sure

By th' unimpeachable and awful oath

And promise of a God. His other gifts

All bear the royal stamp that speaks them his,

And are august, but this transcends them all.