Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Voltairine De Cleyre

we not know that our brothers die

       In the cold and the dark to-night?

       Shelterless faces turned toward the sky

       Will not see the New Year's light!

      Wandering children, lonely, lost,

       Drift away on the human sea,

       While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed

       And drunk in a revelry!

      Ah, know we not in their feasting halls

       Where the loud laugh echoes again,

       That brick and stone in the mortared walls

       Are the bones of murdered men?

      Slowly murdered! By day and day,

       The beauty and strength are reft,

       Till the Man is sapped and sucked away,

       And a Human Rind is left!

      A Human Rind, with old, thin hair,

       And old, thin voice to pray

       For alms in the bitter winter air—

       A knife at his heart alway.

      And the pure in heart are impure in flesh

       For the cost of a little food:

       Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh,

       Let these be accounted good.

      For these are they who in bitter blame

       Eat the bread whose salt is sin;

       Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame,

       Till their hearts are seared within.

      The cowardly jests of a hundred years

       Will be thrown where they pass to-night,

       Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears,

       The saddest of human blight.

      Do we forget them, these broken ones,

       That our watch to-night is set?

       Nay, we smile in the face of the year that comes

       Because we do not forget.

      We do not forget the tramp on the track,

       Thrust out in the wind-swept waste,

       The curses of Man upon his back,

       And the curse of God in his face.

      The stare in the eyes of the buried man

       Face down in the fallen mine;

       The despair of the child whose bare feet ran

       To tread out the rich man's wine;

      The solemn light in the dying gaze

       Of the babe at the empty breast,

       The wax accusation, the sombre glaze

       Of its frozen and rigid rest;

      They are all in the smile that we turn to the east

       To welcome the Century's dawn;

       They are all in our greeting to Night's high priest,

       As we bid the Old Year begone.

      Begone and have done, and go down and be dead

       Deep drowned in your sea of tears!

       We smile as you die, for we wait the red

       Morn-gleam of a hundred-years

      That shall see the end of the age-old wrong—

       The reapers that have not sown—

       The reapers of men with their sickles strong

       Who gather, but have not strown.

      For the earth shall be his and the fruits thereof

       And to him the corn and wine,

       Who labors the hills with an even love

       And knows not "thine and mine."

      And the silk shall be to the hand that weaves,

       The pearl to him who dives,

       The home to the builder; and all life's sheaves

       To the builder of human lives.

      And none go blind that another see,

       Or die that another live;

       And none insult with a charity

       That is not theirs to give.

      For each of his plenty shall freely share

       And take at another's hand:

       Equals breathing the Common Air

       And toiling the Common Land.

      A dream? A vision? Aye, what you will;

       Let it be to you as it seems:

       Of this Nightmare Real we have our fill;

       To-night is for "pleasant dreams."

      Dreams that shall waken the hope that sleeps

       And knock at each torpid Heart

       Till it beat drum taps, and the blood that creeps

       With a lion's spring upstart!

      For who are we to be bound and drowned

       In this river of human blood?

       Who are we to lie in a swound,

       Half sunk in the river mud?

      Are we not they who delve and blast

       And hammer and build and burn?

       Without us not a nail made fast!

       Not a wheel in the world should turn!

      Must we, the Giant, await the grace

       That is dealt by the puny hand

       Of him who sits in the feasting place,

       While we, his Blind Jest, stand

      Between the pillars? Nay, not so:

       Aye, if such thing were true,

       Better were Gaza again, to show

       What the giant's rage may do!

      But yet not this: it were wiser far

       To enter the feasting hall

       And say to the Masters, "These things are

       Not for you alone, but all."

      And this shall be in the Century

       That opes on our eyes to-night;

       So here's to the struggle, if it must be,

       And to him who fights the fight.

      And here's to the dauntless, jubilant throat

       That loud to its Comrade sings,

       Till over the earth shrills the mustering note,

       And the World Strike's signal rings.

      Philadelphia, January 1, 1901.

MARSH-BLOOM

       Table of Contents

      (To Gaetano Bresci.)

      Requiem, requiem, requiem,

       Blood-red blossom of poison stem

       Broken for Man,

       Swamp-sunk leafage and dungeon bloom,

       Seeded bearer of royal doom,

       What now is the ban?

      What to thee is the island grave?

       With desert wind and desolate wave

       Will they silence Death?