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

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      Yes, let Art go, if it must be

         That with it men must starve —

      If Music, Painting, Poetry

         Spring from the wasted hearth.

      Pluck out the flower, however fair,

         Whose beauty cannot bloom,

      (However sweet it be, or rare)

         Save from a noisome tomb.

      These social manners, charm and ease,

         Are hideous to who knows

      The degradation, the disease

         From which their beauty flows.

      So, Poet, must thy singing be;

         O Painter, so thy scene;

      Musician, so thy melody,

         While misery is queen.

      Nay, brothers, sing us battle-songs

         With clear and ringing rhyme;

      Nay, show the world its hateful wrongs,

         And bring the better time!

      Thro’ the mists of years,

         Thro’ the lies of men,

      Your bloody sweat and tears,

      Your desperate hopes and fears

         Reach us once again.

      Brothers, who long ago,

         For life’s bitter sake

      Toiled and suffered so,

      Robbery, insult, blow,

         Rope and sword and stake:

      Toiled and suffered, till

         It burst, the brightening hope,

      “Might and right” and “will and skill,”

      That scorned, and does, and will,

         Sword and stake and rope!

      Wat and Jack and John,

         Tyler, Straw, and Ball,

      Souls that faltered not,

      Hearts like white iron hot,

         Still we hear your call!

      Yes, your “bell is rung,”

         Yes, for “now is time!”

      Come hither, every one,

      Brave ghosts whose day’s not done,

         Avengers of old rime, —

      Come and lead the way,

         Hushed, implacable,

      Suffering no delay,

      Forgetting not that day

         Dreadful, hateful, fell,

      When the liar king,

         The liar gentlemen,

      Wrought that foulest thing,

      Robbing, murdering

         Men who’d trusted them! 5

      Come and lead the way,

         Hushed, implacable.

      What shall stop us, say,

      On that day, our day? —

         Not unloosened hell!

      Had you lived when a tyrant king

         Strove to make all the slaves of one,

      With nobles and with churchmen you

      Had stood unflinching, pure and true,

      To annihilate that hateful thing

         Green Runnymeade beat out of John?

      Had you lived when a wanton crew,

         Flash scoundrels of a day outdone,

      Trod down the toilers birth derides,

      With Cromwell and his Ironsides

      The brave days had discovered you,

         Where Naseby saw the gallants run?

      And yet you, – this same knight in list

         For freedom in her narrow dawn

      Against that one, against those few,

      Vile king, vile nobles – you, yet you

      Stand by the bloody Capitalist,

         Fight with the pandar Gentleman!

      The stars shone faint through the smoky blue;

         The church-bells were ringing;

      Three girls, arms laced, were passing through,

         Tramping and singing.

      Their heads were bare; their short skirts swung

         As they went along;

      Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up, as they sung

         Their defiant song.

      It was not too clean, their feminine lay,

         But it thrilled me quite

      With its challenge to task-master villainous day

         And infamous night,

      With its threat to the robber rich, the proud,

         The respectable free.

      And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,

         And they shouted to me!

      “Girls, that’s the shout, the shout we shall utter

         When with rifles and spades,

      We stand, with the old Red Flag aflutter,

         On the barricades!”

      Sir, we approve your curling lip and nose

         At this vile sight.

      These men, these women are brute beasts? – Who knows,

         Sir, but that you are right?

      Panders and harlots, rogues and thieves and worse,

         We are a crew

      Whose pitiful plunder’s honoured in the purse

         Of gentlemen like you.

      Whom holy Competition’s taught (like us)

         “What’s thine is mine!” —

      How we must love you who have made us thus,

         You may perhaps divine!

      Man of despair and death,

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