Poetry
Free Speech – Charles Mackay, 1907
from the Lucifer the Light Bearer newspaper
“All conviction should be valiant;
Tell thy truth, if truth it be,
Never seek to stem its current;
Thoughts, like rivers, find the sea;
It will fit the widening circle
Of Eternal Verity.
Speak thy thought if thou believ’st it,
Let it jostle whom it may,
E’en although the foolish scorn it,
Or the obstinate gainsay;
Every seed that grows tomorrow
Lies beneath the clod today.
If our sires, the noble hearted,
Pioneers of things to come,
Had, like some, been weak and timid,
Traitors to themselves, and dumb,
Where would be our present knowledge?
Where the hoped Millennium?
Where would be triumphant Science,
Searching with her fearless eyes,
Through the infinite creation,
For the soul that underlies—
Soul of Beauty, soul of Goodness,
Wisdom of the earth and skies?
Where would be all great inventions,
Each from bygone fancies born,
Issued first in doubt and darkness,
Launched ’mid apathy and scorn?
How could noontime ever light us
But for dawning of the morn?
Where would be our free opinion,
Where the right to speak at all,
If our sires, like some mistrustful,
Had been deaf to duty’s call,
And concealed the thoughts within them,
Lying down for fear to fall?
Though an honest thought, outspoken,
Lead thee into chains or death—
What is life compared with virtue?
Shalt thou not survive their breath!
Hark! the future age invites thee!
Listen! tremble, what it saith!
It demands thy thought in justice,
Debt, not tribute of the free;
Have not ages long departed
Groaned, and toiled, and bled for thee?
If the Past have lent thee wisdom,
Pay it to Futurity.”
In His Kingdom of Corpses – Michael R. Burch, 2019
“In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he’s a sinner;
give up sex, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.
In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak! ,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably”
The opening and closing lines of the revolutionary socialist poem Us the Hoboes, 1912
“We shall laugh to scorn your power that now holds the world in awe.
We shall trample on your customs and 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 laugh to scorn your power that now holds the world in awe.
We shall trample on your customs. we shall spit upon your law;
We shall outrage your temples, we shall blaspheme all your gods-
We shall turn the old world over as the plowman turns the clods!”
“If one man smites you on the cheek,
don’t turn the other soft and meek,
but smash him back and lay him low,
war for war, and woe for woe.”
– Unknown
“A painted idol on a tree—
Dripping tears and gore—
A painted idol is to me—
And it is nothing more.”
– Unknown
The Dawn of Freethought – Lucifer, the Light Bearer, 1885
“A glorious day at length is breaking,
When Freethought shall triumphant reign;
The world from slumber is awaking,
In error ne’er to sleep again.
The gloomy night of Superstition
Flies before the approaching day;
Religious fraud and imposition
Can our minde no longer sway.
As the hazy mists of morning
Fly before the sun’s bright beams,
So let Truth, our path adorning,
Scatter all those foolish dreams.
Though long by priestly lore confounded,
Let us seek a better way.
And with joy and peace surrounded,
Hail with triumph Freedom’s day.”
“Live and love and take and give.
And laugh and fight and sigh;
For, it’s all there is of life to live,
And all of death to die.”
– Unknown
“The “great god Bud” of India.
We call a “wooden Joss”—
But a painted wooden Jesus
Is—”Our Saviour on the Cross”
– Unknown
“Statesmen mock and swindle,
And judges work you woe,
Laws are the snares of Satan
And Christ’s your mortal foe.”
– Unknown
Government – Unknown
The government—the government.
It shears us night and day—
It taxes us and taxes us,
And steals our wealth away.
With bond and debt it loads us down,
By cunning, craft and skill.
And puts its bullets in the heart
Of these who cross its will.
O, government—the government—
In air and sea and earth.
Its slightest nod is law and god,
Its judge of life and death.
So we must crouch to government,
With body, mind and soul,
And keep our tongue atween out teeth,
While it collects its toil.
O, government—the government—
It eats up mine and thine—
The Beast of Blood and seven horns—
The Dragon of the Slime
To thee, O, blessed government
We chant glad songs of praise,
Thou holy sacred Juggernaut
Lord God of all our ways.
THE POOR MAN’S SOLILOQUY – Ella Stevens, 1889
– Lucifer the Light Bearer
“My Native Land!” Too well I know,
Where’er thy royal rivers flow,
From mountainside to shores of sea,
Thy proud flag floats, but not for me,
No, not for me.
Bright are the harbor lights, and there,
For leagues around on lambent air,
The brightest of them all aspires
To light the world with freedom’s fires.
O, Liberty!
Thou hast a name bedecked with stars,
But cruel wrong and prison bars
Give thee the lie; while sons of men
Toil on in poverty, and then
Lie down to die.
And in their “Native Land” find rest
In common ground, the law’s bequest.
No land in life, no land in death,
For shroud a rag, and not a breath
Of sympathy.
Columbia, gem of the sea,
America, home of the free:
Where gibbet casts its shadow drear,
And woman barters self, from sheer
Necessity.
And little children, pale and wan,
Mere mute machines, go plodding on,
Strangers to sunshine, field, and flowers,
Waifs in their “Native Land”—Ye Powers!
What mockery!
Men are no longer bought and sold
On auction blocks, for clinking gold;
But worse, in mills and mines and trade
Their very souls are crushed, to aid
Monopoly.
“My Native Land,” with all thy fame,
And wealth and beauty and fair name,
God knows I am not proud of thee,
And fain would blush, in penury,
To call thee free.
—Twentieth Century
The God Horror – Lara
The years rolled on o’er the god-cursed earth,
And creed succeeded creed;
Temples and altars passed away;
But never the priestly greed.
Olympus fell, and the gods of Rome
Had followed the gods of Greece.
Then Messiah came, and the sad earth hailed
The reign of the Prince of Peace.
Once more the rolling thunder wakes,
And the red-fringed clouds grow dark;
And a shriek of pain through the darkness breaks
From the lips of the Dying One.
The storm-fiend paused, and hushed the thunder clang,
And breathless silence fell o’er land and sea,
As through the gloom that cry despairing rang:
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”
The night-clouds close—the pallid lips are mute,
And bowed the thorn-crowned head;
And hushed in heaven are harp and lute,
For, lo! a God is dead!
The night-clouds break—the thunder’s voice is still,
And quenched the lightning-gleam;
And o’er the summit of that hallowed hill
Streams the first morning beam.
The red sun rises from a sea of blood
Where the storm-wracks writhe and toss;
And westward far, o’er darkened field and flood,
Falls the SHADOW OF THE CHAOS.
Still lies the blight of that Shadow’s night
O’er the fairest fields of earth;
And from the gloom of the dead God’s tomb
Stalks forth the wraith of the cursed faith
That on Golgotha had birth.
O’er all our land that spectre Hand
Still holds the dripping knife;
Still hangs the sword o’er the festal board,
And the skeleton Guest, in his grave-clothes drest,
Dashes gall in the wine of life!
How long, how long, ye brave and strong,
Will ye cringe to a broken reed
Or kiss the rod of a dotard god
And the shackles of a creed?
Awake! arise! Lo! the captive cries
From the gloom of the prison cell;
And the blood and the tears of a thousand years
Are quenching the fires of hell!
Strive, man, in thy might, for the truth and the right,
Till the cross from the temple is hurled;
Till in the gleam of To-morrow’s beam
The white flag of the Truth is unfurled;
Till the oriflamme waves o’er the dead god’s graves,
And great Love is the Lord of the world!
