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Spring Song
- THE spring is here, and the long nights grow
- Less bitterly cold than awhile ago;
- Our rags serve their purpose now, and keep
- Warmth enough in us to let us sleep.
- The rain that trickles down our walls
- No longer seems to freeze as it falls;
- There was dust, not mud, on our feet to‐day
- There’s some green in a flower‐pot over the way;
- The sky‐strip over the court’s changed hue,
- From dull yellow‐grey to clear grey‐blue;
- Through our broken windows no more the storm
- Laughs and shrieks as we try to keep warm,
- But through dusty panes the long sunbeams peer,
- For the spring is here.
- Small joy the greenness and grace of spring
- To grey hard lives like our own can bring.
- A drowning man cares little to think
- Of the lights on the waves where he soon must sink.
- The greenest garments the spring can wear
- Are black already with our despair:
- Earth will be one with us soon—shall we care
- If snow or sunshine be over us there,
- Or if wintry the world be we found so drear,
- Or if spring be here?
- In the western half of our Christian town
- The Winter only pretends to frown,
- And when his undreaded rage is done,
- The ‘London season’ they say is begun.
- With wine, feast, revelling, laugh and song,
- The hours rose‐garlanded dance along,
- The whirl of wickedness wilder grows
- In this western camp of our master‐foes;
- They fight with each other—the victors take
- The largest share of the wealth we make;
- They spend on their horses, their women, their wives,
- The money wrung from our blasted lives:
- It is theirs to enjoy—it is ours to pay.
- Do they never dream of a reckoning day,
- When the lives they have wrecked shall be counted up,
- And measured the blood that has brightened their cup,
- When we who have worked shall take payment due,
- And they for their work shall have payment too?
- Do they dream of that coming hour? Not they!
- Their feet flit fast down the smooth steep way,
- They see not the waiting snakes that hide
- In the hothouse flowers at their life‐path’s side,
- They know no justice, no pity, no fear—
- But the spring is here!
- Yes—here! In the hope we had almost lost,
- That has sprung to bud after long years’ frost;
- In this fire in our veins that cries, ‘Give youth,
- Love, manhood, life, for the Right and the Truth’;
- In our steady purpose, for Freedom’s sake,
- Through custom, privilege, ‘fate,’ to break;
- In the brains of the thinkers, the arms of the men
- Who will strike, and strike, and still strike again,
- Till they cut our way to the land of flowers,
- And the summer of freedom at last is ours—
- In these is the spring. The winter was sore—
- It is over and done, and will come no more.
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- The fruit will grow with the changing year,
- Though only the blossoms now appear;
- For the sake of the fruit the blossoms are dear,
- And the spring is here—the spring is here.
1888.
