Verse

Cultural Exchange

An extract from “Cultural Exchange”, by Langston Hughes, from Ask Your Mama (1961). Dreams and nightmares! Nightmares, dreams, oh! Dreaming that the Negroes Of the South have taken over— Voted all the Dixiecrats Right out of power— Comes the COLORED HOUR: Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia, Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser, A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy. In white pillared mansions Sitting on their wide verandas, Wealthy Negroes have white servants, White sharecroppers work the black plantations, And colored children have white mammies: Mammy Faubus Mammy Eastland Mammy...

Dover Beach

This poem seems to be about the post-Darwin retreat of religious conviction; yet it is thought to have been written in 1851, eight years before Darwin published his epoch-making book, The Origin of Species. It is interesting to compare it with W B Yeats' “The Second Coming”. The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd...

A Consecration

Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years. Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with the spears; The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies. Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries, The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes. Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne, Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown, But the lads who carried the koppic and cannot be known. Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road...

Workers of the world, awaken!

Workers of the world, awaken! Break your chains. demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken By exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission From your cradles to your graves? ls the height of your ambition To be good and willing slaves? CHORUS: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Fight for your own emancipation; Arise, ye slaves of every nation. In One Union grand. Our little ones for bread are crying, And millions are from hunger dying; The end the means is justifying, 'Tis the final stand. If the workers take a notion, They can stop all speeding trains; Every ship upon...

Fontona

The shadowed pack in skulking gloom Are poised for brief affray, And mark the peaceful, sleeping home Like carrion beasts of prey . . . No hint of mercy in their act A sudden burst of flame, The faggot flung from out the dark From whence their courage came . . . This is the bravery of their deed— A father and his dead; While cringing justice mocks its name And bows its craven head . . .

Dawn in New York

Claude McKay (1889-1948) was a Jamaican poet who, during his time in London, became involved in revolutionary socialist circles. He attended the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922. While he did not associate himself with Trotskyism, he became disillusioned with Stalinism in the 1930s and later became a Roman Catholic. He was a key figure in the “Harlem Renaissance”, and his 1922 poem “Dawn in New York” reimagines William Wordsworth’s “Upon Westminster Bridge” for 20th-century Manhattan, writing in the stories of human struggle and suffering that Wordsworth’s picturesque...

We Only Want the Earth

Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek Our programme to retouch, And will insist, whene’er they speak That we demand too much. ’Tis passing strange, yet I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. “Be moderate,” the trimmers cry, Who dread the tyrants’ thunder. “You ask too much and people fly From you aghast in wonder.” ’Tis passing strange, for I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. Our masters all a godly crew, Whose hearts throb for the poor, Their sympathies assure us, too, If...

Forth the Banners Go: The Day Is Coming.

Come hither, lads, and hearken, for a tale there is to tell, Of the wonderful days a-coming, when all shall be better than well. And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of the sea, And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be. There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to come Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home. For then--laugh not, but listen to this strange tale of mine - All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine. Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his...

To Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

They slew you in their beastly rage. Because you dared the struggle Wage With tyrants and with traitors too— The traitors feared and so they slew. Deluded naves! Your lifeless tongues More potent now in martyr songs Will trumpet forth the truth until, The very earth will rock and thrill; And thrones and states will crash and fall— And labor triumphs over all. * * So comrades, sleep—your Work is done; Sleep on! The battle will be won.

James Connolly's The Legacy

Come here my son, and for a time put up your childish play, Draw nearer to your father’s bed, and lay your games away. No sick man’s ’plaint is this of mine, ill-tempered at your noise, Nor carping at your eagerness to romp with childish toys. Thou’rt but a boy and I, a man outworn with care and strife, Would not deprive you of one joy thou canst extract from life; But o’er my soul comes creeping on death’s shadow, and my lips Must give to you a message ere life meets that eclipse. Slow runs my blood, my nether limbs I feel not, and my eyes Can scarce discern, here in this room, that childish...

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