The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years
General
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years
Social justice; Social problems
(American essayist, philosopher and poet. The two stanzas following,
which may be said to sum up the revolutionary view of the subject of
"confiscation," are taken from a poem read in Boston on Emancipation
day, January 1, 1863)
Today unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!
Pay ransom to the owner
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
Battle Hymn of the Chinese Revolution (1912)
(_From the Chinese_)
Freedom, one of the greatest blessings of Heaven,
United to Peace, thou wilt work on this earth ten thousand
wonderful new things.
Grave as a spirit, great as a giant rising to the very skies,
With the clouds for a chariot and the wind for a steed,
Come, come to reign over the earth!
For the sake of the black hell of our slavery,
Come, enlighten us with a ray of thy sun!...
In this century we are working to open a new age.
In this century, with one voice, all virile men
Are calling for a new making of heaven and earth.
Hin-Yun, our ancestor, guide us!
Spirit of Freedom, come and protect us!
The Revolution
BY RICHARD WAGNER
(It is not generally recalled that the composer of the world's
greatest music-dramas, 1813-1883, was an active revolutionist, who
took part in street fighting in the German Revolution of 1848, and
escaped a long imprisonment only by flight. The following is from his
contributions to the Dresden _Volksblätter_)
I am the secret of perpetual youth, the everlasting creator of
life; where I am not, death rages. I am the comfort, the hope,
the dream of the oppressed. I destroy what exists; but from the
rock whereon I light new life begins to flow. I come to you
to break all chains which bear you down; to free you from the
embrace of death, and instill a new life into your veins. All
that exists must perish; that is the eternal condition of life,
and I the all-destroying fulfil that law to create a fresh, new
existence. I will renovate to the very foundations the order of
things in which you live, for it is the offspring of sin, whose
blossom is misery and whose fruit is crime. The grain is ripe,
and I am the reaper. I will dissipate every delusion which
has mastery over the human race. I will destroy the authority
of the one over the many; of the lifeless over the living;
of the material over the spiritual. I will break into pieces
the authority of the great; of the law of property. Let the
will of each be master of mankind, one's own strength be one's
one property, for the freeman is the sacred man, and there is
nothing sublimer than he....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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