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.

Lola Ridge

(Picture: Burmeister and Wain Iron Foundry, Peder Severin Kroyer)