Freedom and Truth
To a Friend.
The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
Is liberty to comprehend the law.
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
Comprising means and end in Truth’s great name.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 14, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Freedom and Truth” was published in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems (Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1859), a posthumous collection of Margaret Fuller’s writings edited by her brother, the clergyman and fallen Union soldier Arthur Buckminster Fuller, and published three years before his own death at the Battle of Fredericksburg.
Margaret Fuller
