Lola Ridge

Reveille

Come forth, you workers!
 Let the fires go cold’€”
 Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs’€”
 Let the iron run wild
 Like a red bramble on the floors’€”
 Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine
 And the shrapnel lying on the wharves’€”
 Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom’€”
 Come,
 With your ashen lives,
 Your lives like dust in your hands.
 I call upon you, workers.
 It is not yet light
 But I beat upon your doors.
 You say you await the Dawn
 But I say you are the Dawn.
 Come, in your irresistible unspent force
 And make new light upon the mountains.
 You have turned deaf ears to others’€”
 Me you shall hear.
 Out of the mouths of turbines,
 Out of the turgid throats of engines,
 Over the whistling steam,
 You shall hear me shrilly piping.
 Your mills I shall enter like the wind,
 And blow upon your hearts,
 Kindling the slow fire.
 They think they have tamed you, workers’€”
 Beaten you to a tool
 To scoop up hot honor
 Till it be cool’€”
 But out of the passion of the red frontiers
 A great flower trembles and burns and glows
 And each of its petals is a people.
 Come forth, you workers’€”
 Clinging to your stable
 And your wisp of warm straw’€”
 Let the fires grow cold,
 Let the iron spill out of the troughs,
 Let the iron run wild
 Like a red bramble on the floors’€¦.
 As our forefathers stood on the prairies
 So let us stand in a ring,
 Let us tear up their prisons like grass
 And beat them to barricades’€”
 Let us meet the fire of their guns
 With a greater fire,
 Till the birds shall fly to the mountains
 For one safe bough.
Other works by Lola Ridge...



Top