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City
- ‘So has the spark died out that the torch of hope dropped among you?
- So is the burden bound more fast to the shrinking shoulder?
- Far too faint are your cries to be heard by the men who wrong you?
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- And if they heard they are high, and the air as men rise grows colder!
- Yet you are men though so weak, and in mine and workshop your brothers,
- Stronger in head, and in heart not less sad, for deliverance are striving;
- These will stand fast, and will face the cruel unjust and ungiving,
- And you in our ranks shall be, our hearts fast clasped in each other’s!
- ‘For in the night of our sorrow cold lights are breaking and brightening
- Out in the eastern sky; through the drifting clouds, wind‐driven,
- Over the earth new gleams and glories are laughing and lightening,
- Keener the air grows, clearer; brighter the face of the heaven.
- Turn we our face to the east—oh, wind of the dawn, blow to us
- Freshness and strength and resolve! The star of old faith grows paler
- Before the eyes of our Freedom, though still wrath’s red mists veil her,
- For this is our battle day; revenge, like our blood, runs through us.
- ‘This is our vengeance day. Our masters, made fat with our fasting,
- Shall fall before us like corn when the sickle for harvest is strong:
- Old wrong shall give might to our arm—remembrance of wrong shall make lasting
- The graves we will dig for the tyrants we bore with too much and too long.
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- The sobs of our starving children, the tears of our heartsick mothers,
- The moan of your murdered manhood crushed out by their wanton pressure,
- The wail of the life‐long anguish that paid the price of their pleasure,
- These will make funeral music to speed the lost souls of them, brothers!
- ‘Shoulder to shoulder we march, and for those who go down ’mid the fighting
- With rifles in hand and pikes, and the red flag over them flying,
- Glad shall our hearts be for them—who die when our sun is lighting
- The warm, wide heavens, and sheds its lovely light on their dying.
- Fight, though we lose our dearest—fight, though the battle rages
- Fiercer and hotter than ever was fight in the world before:
- We must fight—how can men do less? If we die, what can men do more?
- And the sun of Freedom shall shine across our graves to the ages!’
