A dream? A vision? Aye, what you will; Let it be to you as it seems: Of this Nightmare Real we have our fill; To-night is for "pleasant dreams." Dreams that shall waken the hope that sleeps And knock at each torpid Heart Till it beat drum taps, and the blood that creeps With a lion's spring upstart! For who are we to be bound and drowned In this river of human blood? Who are we to lie in a swound, Half sunk in the river mud? Are we not they who delve and blast And hammer and build and burn? Without us not a nail made fast! Not a wheel in the world should turn! Must we, the Giant, await the grace That is dealt by the puny hand Of him who sits in the feasting place, While we, his Blind Jest, stand Between the pillars? Nay, not so: Aye, if such thing were true, Better were Gaza again, to show What the giant's rage may do! But yet not this: it were wiser far To enter the feasting hall And say to the Masters, "These things are Not for you alone, but all." And this shall be in the Century That opes on our eyes to-night; So here's to the struggle, if it must be, And to him who fights the fight. And here's to the dauntless, jubilant throat That loud to its Comrade sings, Till over the earth shrills the mustering note, And the World Strike's signal rings. =Philadelphia=, January 1, 1901. MARSH-BLOOM (To Gaetano Bresci.) Requiem, requiem, requiem, Blood-red blossom of poison stem Broken for Man, Swamp-sunk leafage and dungeon bloom, Seeded bearer of royal doom, What now is the ban? What to thee is the island grave? With desert wind and desolate wave Will they silence Death? Can they weight thee now with the heaviest stone? Can they lay aught on thee with "Be alone," That hast conquered breath? Lo, "it is finished"--a man for a king! Mark you well who have done this thing: The flower has roots; Bitter and rank grow the things of the sea; Ye shall know what sap ran thick in the tree When ye pluck its fruits. Requiem, requiem, requiem, Sleep on, sleep on, accursed of them Who work our pain; A wild Marsh-blossom shall blow again From a buried root in the slime of men, On the day of the Great Red Rain. =Philadelphia=, July, 1901. WRITTEN--IN--RED[A] (To Our Living Dead in Mexico's Struggle.) Written in red their protest stands, For the Gods of the World to see; On the dooming wall their bodiless hands Have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands Illumine the message: "Seize the lands! Open the prisons and make men free!" Flame out the living words of the dead Written--in--red.