Page:Adams - Songs of the Army of the Night.djvu/52

46 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 taskmaster 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 shall utter
 * When, with rifles and spades,

We stand, with the old Red flag aflutter,
 * On the barricades!

Sir, we approve your curling lip and nose
 * At this vile sight.

These men, these women are "brute beasts?"—Who knows,
 * Sir, but that you are right?

Panders and harlots, rogues and thieves and worse,
 * We are a crew

Whose pitiful plunder's honoured in the purse
 * Of Gentlemen (like you)

Whom holy Competition's taught (like us)
 * "What's thine is mine!"—

How we must love you who have made us thus,
 * You may perhaps Divine!