Us, the Hoboes

US, THE HOBOES.


Covington Hall.


We shall laugh to scorn your power that now holds in awe,

We shall trample on your customs and shall spit upon your law;

We shall come up from life’s desert to your burdened banquet hall,

We shall turn your wine to wormwood, your honey into gall.

 

We shall go where wall the children, where from your race killing mills

Flows a bloody stream of profits to your cursed insatiate tills;

We shall tear them from your drivers in our shamed angered pride

With the fury and the fierceness of a fatherhood denied.

 

We shall set sisters on you, those you trapped into your hells,

Where the mother instinct’s stified and no earthly beauty dwells;

We shall call them from the living death-the death in li re you gave,

To sing our class” triumph o’er your crue1 system’s grave,

 

We shall strip them of their epaulets, the panderers who fight

Your wars against the workers for a bone on which to bite,

We shall batter down your prisons, we shall set your chain-gangs free,

We shall drive you from the mountainside, the valley, plain and sea

 

We shall hunt around the fences where your ox-man sweat and gape

‘Till they stampede down your stockades in their effort to escape;

We shall steal up through the darkness, we shall prowl the wood and town

‘Till they waken to their power and arise and ride you down.

 

We shall send a message to them on a whisper down the night,

We shall bid the warrior women drive the ox-men to the fight;

We shall use your guile against you-all the cunning you have taught

All the wisdom of the serpent to attain the ending sought.

 

We shall come as comes the cyclone, -in the stillness we shall form,

From the claim your terror fashioned, we shall hurl on you the storm;

We shall strike when least expected-when you think toil’s rout complete

And crush you and your Hessians ‘neath our broganshodded feet.

 

We shall laugh to scorn your power that now holds the world in awe,

We shall trample on your customs and shall split upon your law:

We shall outrage all your temples, -we shall blaspheme all your gods,

We shall turn the old world over as a plowman turns the clods.