We want the Galilean
Who knew cross and rod.
It’s your “good taste” that prefers
A bastard God!
“DEFEAT?”
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!
TO JOHN RUSKIN.
(After reading his “Modern Painters.”)
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