Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/197

 Chants Communal

(American poet and editor, born 1858; disciple and biographer of Walt Whitman)

You will long resist me. You will deceive yourself with initial victories. You will find me weak. You will count me only one against a million. You will see the world seem to go on just as it is. One day confirming another. Presidents succeeding Presidents in unvarying mediocrity. Millionaires dead reborn in millionaire children. Starvation handing starvation on. The people innocently played against the people. Demand and supply cohabited for the production of a blind progeny. The landlord suborning the land. The moneylord suborning money. The storelord suborning production. All will seem to go on just as it is. And you who resist me will be fooled. You will say the universe is against me. You will say I am cursed. Or you will in your tenderer moments ask: What's the use? But all this time I will be keeping on. Doing nothing unusual. Only keeping on. Asleep or awake, keeping on. Compelled to say the say of justice all by myself. Willing to wait until you are shaken up and convinced. Until you will say it to yourself. And say it to yourself you will.

There are things ahead that will stir you out of your indifference or lethargy or doubt. Give you an immortal awakening. So you will never sleep again. I do not know just what it will be. But something. And you will know it when it comes. And then you will understand why I am calm. Why I am not worried by