Page:When the Leaves Come Out (Chaplin 1917).pdf/50

  Writhe! sting! deadly thing!
 * Quick was his hooded head . ..

Self slain in anguish grand.
 * Ah! see!
 * Great King,

Behold him dead and still— Dead on the pallid sand. ..

  Good God! Must I now meekly bend my head
 * And cringe back to that gloom I know so well?
 * Forget the wrongs my tongue may never tell,

Forget the plea they silenced with their lead, Forget the hillside strewn with murdered dead
 * Where once they drove me—mocked me when I fell
 * All black and bloody by their holes of hell,

While all my loved ones wept uncomforted?

Is this the land my fathers fought to own— Here where they curse me—beaten and alone?
 * But God, it's cold! My children sob and cry!

Shall I go back into the mines and wait, And lash the conflagration of my hate—
 * Or shall I stand and fight them till I die?

