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Title: Reveille
Author: Lola Ridge [
More Titles by Ridge]
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.
[The end]
Lola Ridge's poem: Reveille
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