Opening the text

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

We have fed you all for a thousand years,
      For that was our doom, you know,
    From the days when you chained us in your fields
      To the strike of a week ago.
    You ha' eaten our lives and our babies and wives,
      And we're told it's your legal share;
    But, if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
      Good God, we ha' bought it fair!


The Two "Reigns of Terror"

(_From "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"_)

(America's favorite humorist, 1837-1910)

There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it
and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the
other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the
other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon
ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but
our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror,
the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror
of swift death by the axe, compared with life-long death from
hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift
death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the
stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by
that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught
to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly
contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that
unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been
taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

  (Quoted by special permission of Harper & Brothers.)


In Trafalgar Square

(_From "Songs of the Army of the Night"_)

BY FRANCIS W. L. ADAMS

(See page 219)

    The stars shone faint through the smoky blue;
      The church-bells were ringing;
    Three girls, arms laced, were passing through,
      Tramping and singing.

    Their heads were bare; their short skirts swung
      As they went along;
    Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up, as they sung
      Their defiant song.

    It was not too clean, their feminine lay,
      But it thrilled me quite
    With its challenge to task-master villainous day
      And infamous night,

    With its threat to the robber rich, the proud,
      The respectable free.
    And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,
      And they shouted to me!

    "_Girls, that's the shout, the shout we will utter
      When, with rifles and spades,
    We stand, with the old Red Flag aflutter,
      On the barricades!_"


The Orator on the Barricade

(_From "Les Miserables"_)

BY VICTOR HUGO

(See page 182)

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

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

We have fed you all for a thousand years,
      For that was our doom, you know,
    From the days when you chained us in your fields
      To the strike of a week ago.
    You ha' eaten our lives and our babies and wives,
      And we're told it's your legal share;
    But, if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
      Good God, we ha' bought it fair!


The Two "Reigns of Terror"

(_From "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"_)

(America's favorite humorist, 1837-1910)

There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it
and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the
other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the
other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon
ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but
our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror,
the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror
of swift death by the axe, compared with life-long death from
hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift
death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the
stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by
that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught
to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly
contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that
unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been
taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

  (Quoted by special permission of Harper & Brothers.)


In Trafalgar Square

(_From "Songs of the Army of the Night"_)

BY FRANCIS W. L. ADAMS

(See page 219)

    The stars shone faint through the smoky blue;
      The church-bells were ringing;
    Three girls, arms laced, were passing through,
      Tramping and singing.

    Their heads were bare; their short skirts swung
      As they went along;
    Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up, as they sung
      Their defiant song.

    It was not too clean, their feminine lay,
      But it thrilled me quite
    With its challenge to task-master villainous day
      And infamous night,

    With its threat to the robber rich, the proud,
      The respectable free.
    And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,
      And they shouted to me!

    "_Girls, that's the shout, the shout we will utter
      When, with rifles and spades,
    We stand, with the old Red Flag aflutter,
      On the barricades!_"


The Orator on the Barricade

(_From "Les Miserables"_)

BY VICTOR HUGO

(See page 182)

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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

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

No reviews yet