Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Voltairine De Cleyre
have seized, in the name of God, the
Child's crust from famine's dole;
You have taken the price of its body
And sung a mass for its soul!
You have smiled on the man, who, deceiving,
Paid exemption to ease your wrath!
You have cursed the poor fool who believed him,
Though her body lay prone in your path!
You have laid the seal on the lip!
You have bid us to be content!
To bow 'neath our master's whip,
And give thanks for the scourge—"heav'n sent."
These, O Church, are your thanks;
These are the fruits without flaw,
That flow from the chosen ranks
Who keep in your perfect law;
Doors hard-locked on the homeless!
Stained glass windows for bread!
On the living, the law of dumbness,
And the law of need, for—the dead!
Better the dead, who, not needing,
Go down to the vaults of the Earth,
Than the living whose hearts lie bleeding,
Crushed by you at their very birth.
What have you done, O State,
That the toilers should shout your ways;
Should light up the fires of their hate
If a "traitor" should dare dispraise?
How do you guard the trust
That the people repose in you?
Do you keep to the law of the just,
And hold to the changeless true?
What do you mean when you say
"The home of the free and brave"?
How free are your people, pray?
Have you no such thing as a slave?
What are the lauded "rights,"
Broad-sealed, by your Sovereign Grace?
What are the love-feeding sights
You yield to your subject race?
The rights!—Ah! the right to toil,
That another, idle, may reap;
The right to make fruitful the soil
And a meagre pittance to keep!
The right of a woman to own
Her body, spotlessly pure,
And starve in the street—alone!
The right of the wronged—to endure!
The right of the slave—to his yoke!
The right of the hungry—to pray!
The right of the toiler—to vote
For the master who buys his day!
You have sold the sun and the air!
You have dealt in the price of blood!
You have taken the lion's share
While the lion is fierce for food!
You have laid the load of the strong
On the helpless, the young, the weak!
You have trod out the purple of wrong;—
Beware where its wrath shall wreak!
"Let the Voice of the People be heard!
O——" You strangled it with your rope!
Denied the last dying word,
While your Trap and your Gallows spoke!
But a thousand voices rise
Where the words of the martyr fell;
The seed springs fast to the Skies
Watered deep from that bloody well!
Hark! Low down you will hear
The storm in the underground!
Listen, Tyrants, and fear!
Quake at that muffled sound!
"Heavens, that mocked our dust,
Smile on, in your pitiless blue!
Silent as you are to us,
So silent are we to you!
"Churches that scourged our brains!
Priests that locked fast our hands!
We planted the torch in your chains:
Now gather the burning brands!
"States that have given us LAW,
When we asked for THE RIGHT TO EARN BREAD!
The Sword that Damocles saw
By a hair swings over your head!
"What ye have sown ye shall reap:
Teardrops, and Blood, and Hate,
Gaunt gather before your Seat,
And knock at your palace gate!
"There are murderers on your Thrones!
There are thieves in your Justice-halls!
White Leprosy cancers their stones,
And gnaws at their worm-eaten walls!
"And the Hand of Belshazzar's Feast
Writes over, in flaming light:
Thought's kingdom no more to the Priest;
Nor the Law of Right unto Might."
JOHN P. ALTGELD
(After an incarceration of six long years in Joliet state prison for an act of which they were entirely innocent, namely, the throwing of the Haymarket bomb, in Chicago, May 4th, 1886, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden, were liberated by Gov. Altgeld, who thus sacrificed his political career to an act of justice.)
There was a tableau! Liberty's clear light
Shone never on a braver scene than that.
Here was a prison, there a Man who sat
High in the Halls of state! Beyond, the might
Of ignorance and Mobs, whose hireling press
Yells at their bidding like the slaver's hounds,
Ready with coarse caprice to curse or bless,
To make or unmake rulers!—Lo, there sounds
A grating of the doors! And three poor men,
Helpless and hated, having naught to give,
Come from their long-sealed tomb, look up, and live,
And thank this Man that they are free again.
And He—to all the world this Man dares say,
"Curse as you will! I have been just this day."
Philadelphia, June, 1893.
THE CRY OF THE UNFIT
The gods have left us, the creeds have crumbled;