Bierce imagines freedom not as a noble ideal but as a shrieking, wounded presence. She isn’t celebrated — she screams whenever monarchs meet, parliaments convene, or common citizens cast their votes. Each supposed exercise of power, whether by royalty or the “sovereign people,” simply tightens her chains. The speaker seems bitterly amused, turning a schoolboy fact about a Polish freedom fighter into a dark refrain: on every wind, he hears her yell. The mood is sarcastic and weary, dripping with contempt for those who “apportion Heaven / And give her Hell.” There’s no hope here, only a sense that freedom is forever betrayed by anyone who gets a taste of authority. The repeated cries — shrieked, screams, clamors — build a noisy, chaotic atmosphere that mocks our usual reverence for liberty.
Freedom — Summary
Freedom, as every schoolboy knows, Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell; On every wind, indeed, that blows I hear her yell.
She screams whenever monarchs meet, And parliaments as well, To bind the chains about her feet And toll her knell.
And when the sovereign people cast The votes they cannot spell, Upon the pestilential blast Her clamors swell.
For all to whom the power's given To sway or to compel, Among themselves apportion Heaven And give her Hell.