Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Chorus
We are free, may we always be so,
and let the sun rather deny its light
Than that we should be absent to the solemn vote
that elevated the motherland to Eternity.
For a long time the oppressed Peruvian
dragged the ominous chain;
sentenced to a cruel servitude
for a long time in silence he moaned.
But as soon as the sacred cry of
"Liberty!" was heard on its coasts,
he shook off the indolence of slavery,
he raised the humiliated neck.
Now the roar of rough chains
that we had heard for three centuries of horror
from the free, at the sacred cry
that the world heard astonished, ceased.
Everywhere the inflamed San Martín
"Liberty", "Liberty" pronounced;
and the Andes, rocking their base,
announced it as well, in unison.
With its influx the peoples woke up,
and like lighting ran the opinion;
from the Isthmus to Tierra del Fuego,
and from Tierra del Fuego to the icy region.
Everyone vowed to break the link
that Nature denied to both worlds,
and break the scepter that Spain
had reclined, proud, on both.
Lima fulfilled this solemn vow,
and, severe, her anger showed
by throwing out the powerless tyrant,
who had been trying to extend his oppression.
On her endeavor the shackles cracked,
and the furrows that she had repaired in herself
stirred up her hatred and vengeance,
inherited from her Inca and Lord.
Countrymen, may we see her a slave no more.
If for three centuries she moaned, humiliated,
forever may we vow that she be free,
maintaining her own splendor.
Our arms, until today unarmed,
be they always readying the cannon,
that some day the beaches of Iberia
will feel the horror of its roar.
May we arouse the jealousy of Spain
since it has a premonition, with want and furor,
that in a contest of great nations
our country will enter in comparison.
On the list formed by these
we shall fill the line first,
ahead of the ambitious Iberian tyrant,
who devastated all of America.
On its summit may the Andes sustain
the two-color flag or standard,
may it announce to the centuries the effort
that gave us being free forever.
Under its shadow may we live calmly
and, at the sun's birth over its summits,
may we renew the great oath
we rendered to the God of Jacob.