Page:Poems for Workers - ed. Manuel Gomez (1925).djvu/27

 When the Cock Crows

By

To the Memory of Frank Little, Hanged at Midnight.

drove up to his house at midnight and woke the

poor woman who kept it.

And asked her: "Where is the man who spoke against

the war and insulted the army?"

And the old woman took fear of the men and the hour,

and showed them the room where he slept,

And when they made sure it was he whom they wanted,

they dragged him out of his bed with blows, tho'

he was willing to walk,

And they fastened his hands on his back, and they drove

him across the black night,

And there was no moon and no stars and not any visible

thing, and even the faces of the men were eaten

with the leprosy of the dark, for they were masked

with black shame,

And nothing showed in the gloom save the glow of his

eyes and the flame of his soul that scorched the

face of Death.

gave witness of what they did to him, after

they took him away, until a dog barked at his

corpse,

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