You who pass coldly by when the police rush upon us,

When they wrench away our banners,

(Beautiful banners whose colors cry a demand for liberty)

You who criticize or condemn

(Declaring you “believe in suffrage,

Worked for it in your state, and your mother

knew Susan B. Anthony”)

Can you think in terms of a nation?

Could you die, (or face ridicule) for your belief?

For the freedom of women, for your freedom,

we are fighting; 

For your safety we face danger, bear torture;

For your honor endure untellable insult.

To win democracy for you we defend the banners of democracy

Till our banners and our bodies

Are flung together on the pavement,

Waiting at the gates of government,

We have made of our weariness a symbol

Of women’s long wait for justice.

We have borne the hunger and hardship of prison,

To open people’s eyes

To men’s determination to imprison the power of women.

You women who pass coldly by,

Do you imagine your freedom is coming

As a summer wind blows over fields?

Slowly it has advanced by a sixty-years’ war,

(Those who have fought in it have not forgotten)


And that war is not won.

Strongly entrenched, the foe sits plotting.

Close to his lines our banners fly,

Signalling where to direct the fire,

Greater forces are needed, reserves and recruits.

Are you for winning or for waiting,

Women who watch the banners go down?

Women who say, “Suffrage is coming,”

While suffrage goes by you into Prussia?

Case to be content with applauding speeches, and praising politicians.

Patience is shameful.

Awake, rise, and act. 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: 

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high. 

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.

He cuts what holds his days together
And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
The arrowed vane announcing weather,
The tripping racket of a clock;

Seeking, I think, a light that waits
Still as a lamp upon a shelf,—
A land with hills like rocky gates
Where no sea leaps upon itself.

But he will find that nothing dares
To be enduring, save where, south
Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
On beauty with a rusted mouth,—

Where something dreadful and another
Look quietly upon each other.