Songs of the Army of the Night. Adams Francis William Lauderdale

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      Take, then, your paltry Christ,

         Your gentleman God.

      We want the carpenter’s son,

         With his saw and hod.

      We want the man who loved

         The poor and oppressed,

      Who hated the rich man and king

         And the scribe and the priest.

      We want the Galilean

         Who knew cross and rod.

      It’s your “good taste” that prefers

         A bastard God!

      Who is it speaks of defeat? —

         I tell you a Cause like ours

      Is greater than defeat can know;

         It is the power of powers!

      As surely as the earth rolls round,

         As surely as the glorious sun

      Brings the great world sea-wave,

         Must our Cause be won!

      What is defeat to us? —

         Learn what a skirmish tells,

      While the great Army marches on

         To storm earth’s hells!

      Yes, you do well to mock us, you

         Who knew our bitter woe —

      To jeer the false, deny the true

         In us blind struggling low,

      While, on your pleasant place aloft

         With flowers and clouds and streams,

      At our black sweat and toil you scoffed

         That marred your idle dreams.

      “Oh, freedom, what was that to us,”

      (You’d shout down to us there),

      “Except the freedom foul, vicious,

         From all of good and fair?

      “Obedience, faith, humility,

         To us were empty names.” —

      The like to you (might we reply)

         Whose noisy life proclaims

      Presumption, want of human love,

         Impatience, filthy breath, 2

      The snob in soul who looks above,

         Trampling on what’s beneath.

      When did you strive, in nobler part,

         With love and gentleness,

      To help one soul, to win one heart

         To joy and hope and peace?

      Go to, vain prophet, without faith

         In God who maketh new,

      With hankerings for this putrid death,

         This Flesh-feast of the Few,

      This Social Structure of red mud,

         This Edifice of slime,

      Whose bricks are bones, whose mortar’s blood,

         Whose pinnacle is Crime! —

      Go to, for we who strain our power

         For light and warmth and scope,

      For wives’, for children’s happier hour,

         Can teach you faith and hope.

      Hark to the shout of those who cleared

         The Missionary Ridge!

      Look on those dead who never feared

         The battle’s bloody bridge!

      Watch the stern swarm at that last breach

         March up that came not thence —

      And learn Democracy can teach

         Divine obedience. 3

      Pass through that South at last brought low

         Where loyal freemen live,

      And learn Democracy knows how

         To utterly forgive.

      Come then, and take this free-given bread

         Of us who’ve scarce enough;

      Hush your proud lips, bow down your head

         And worship human love!

      You are at least a man, of men a king.

         You have a heart, and with that heart you love.

         The race you come from is not gendered of

      The filthy sty whose latest litter cling

      Round England’s flesh-pots, gorged and gluttoning.

         No, but on flaming battle-fields, in courts

         Of honour and of danger old resorts,

      The name of Hohen-Zollern clear doth ring.

      O Father William, you, not falsely weak,

         Who never spared the rod to spoil the child,

      Our mighty Germany, we only speak

         To bless you with a blessing sweet and mild,

      Ere that near heaven your weary footsteps seek

         Where love with liberty is reconciled.

      “Be with us by day, by night,

         O lover, O friend;

      Hold before us thy light

         Unto the end!

      “See, all these children of ours

         Starved and ill-clad.

      Speak to thy heart’s lily-flowers,

         And make them glad!

      “Our wives and daughters are here,

         Knowing wrong and shame’s touch

      Bid them be of good cheer

         Who have lovèd much.

      “And we, we are robbed and oppressed,

         Even as thine were.

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