Francis Adams - Songs of the Army of the Night

’Tis not when I am here,
In these homeless homes,
Where sin and shame and disease
And foul death comes;

’Tis not when heart and brain
Would be still and forget
Men and women and children
Dragged down to the pit:

But when I hear them declaiming
Of “liberty,” “order,” and “law,”
The husk-hearted gentleman
And the mud-hearted bourgeois,

That a sombre hateful desire
Burns up slow in my breast
To wreck the great guilty temple,
And give us rest!

“The foxes have holes,
And the birds of the air have nests,
But where shall the heads of the sons of men
Be laid, be laid?”

“ Where the cold corpse rests ,
Where the sightless moles
Burrow and yet cannot make it afraid ,
Rout but cannot wake it again ,
There shall the heads of the sons of men
Be laid , laid !”

Where is poor Jesus gone?
He sits with Dives now,
And not even the crumbs are flung
To Lazarus below.

Where is poor Jesus gone?
Is he with Magdalen?
He doles her one by one
Her wages of shame!

Where is poor Jesus gone?
The good Samaritan,
What does he there alone?
He stabs the wounded man!

Where is poor Jesus gone,
The lamb they sacrificed?
They’ve made God of his carrion
And labelled it “Christ!”

“He holds a pistol to my head,
Swearing that he will shoot me dead,
If he have not my purse instead,
The robber!”

“ He , with the lash of wealth and power ,
Flogs out my heart and flings the dower ,
The plundered pittance of his hour ,
The robber !”

“He shakes his serpent tongue that lies,
Wins trust for poisoned sophistries
And stabs me in the dark, and flies,
The assassin!”

“ He pits me in the dreadful fight
Against my fellow . Then he quite
Strips both his victims in the night ,
The assassin !”

This is what I pray
In this horrible day,
In this terrible night,
God will give me light.
Such as I have had,
That I go not mad.

This is what I seek,
God will keep me meek
Till mine eyes behold,
Till my lips have told
All this hellish crime. —
Then it’s sleeping time !

Take, then, your paltry Christ,
Your gentleman God.
We want the carpenter’s son,
With his saw and hod.

We want the man who loved
The poor and oppressed,
Who hated the rich man and king
And the scribe and the priest.

We want the Galilean
Who knew cross and rod.
It’s your “good taste” that prefers
A bastard God!

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!

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

Presumption, want of human love,
Impatience, filthy breath, 2 2 His attack on George Eliot in “Fiction, Fair and Foul,” in the Nineteenth Century , for instance.
The snob in soul who looks above,
Trampling on what’s beneath.

When did you strive, in nobler part,
With love and gentleness,
To help one soul, to win one heart
To joy and hope and peace?

Go to, vain prophet, without faith
In God who maketh new,
With hankerings for this putrid death,
This Flesh-feast of the Few,

This Social Structure of red mud,
This Edifice of slime,
Whose bricks are bones, whose mortar’s blood,
Whose pinnacle is Crime! —

Go to, for we who strain our power
For light and warmth and scope,
For wives’, for children’s happier hour,
Can teach you faith and hope.

Hark to the shout of those who cleared
The Missionary Ridge!
Look on those dead who never feared
The battle’s bloody bridge!

Watch the stern swarm at that last breach
March up that came not thence —
And learn Democracy can teach
Divine obedience. 3 3 The attack on Missionary Ridge is an example of the brilliant initiative, as the holding of the Bloody Angle in the Wilderness is of the dauntless resolution, of the army of the Democracy of the United States, while the last attacks on Richmond were the final exploit of the conqueror of two combatants, of whom it is enough to say that they were worthy of one another.

Pass through that South at last brought low
Where loyal freemen live,
And learn Democracy knows how
To utterly forgive.

Come then, and take this free-given bread
Of us who’ve scarce enough;
Hush your proud lips, bow down your head
And worship human love!

You are at least a man, of men a king.
You have a heart, and with that heart you love.
The race you come from is not gendered of
The filthy sty whose latest litter cling
Round England’s flesh-pots, gorged and gluttoning.
No, but on flaming battle-fields, in courts
Of honour and of danger old resorts,
The name of Hohen-Zollern clear doth ring.
O Father William, you, not falsely weak,
Who never spared the rod to spoil the child,
Our mighty Germany, we only speak
To bless you with a blessing sweet and mild,
Ere that near heaven your weary footsteps seek
Where love with liberty is reconciled.

“Be with us by day, by night,
O lover, O friend;
Hold before us thy light
Unto the end!