Page:When the Leaves Come Out (Chaplin 1917).pdf/60

 

From the blackness of Toil's degradation
 * In the mine and the mill and the farm,

O'er the gulf of a dead generation
 * Comes the newly-born voice of Alarm.

'Tis the voice of the dead in the living,
 * An appeal to the brain and the arm,

'Tis the voices of murdered men giving
 * New life to the cry of Alarm.

Though the Tyrant is glutted and lustful,
 * And protected by law's mystic charm,

Yet his slumbering slaves are distrustful,
 * They have hearkened and heard the Alarm.

And he fears that his power is shaken
 * That was mighty to maim and to harm;

That his serf-men who slept will awaken
 * At the Call of Revolt—the Alarm;

That his world with its bleak desolation
 * Will be shattered by Labor's strong arm;

That the slumbering slaves of the nation
 * Will UNITE at the sound of Alarm.

