Reveille

Come forth, you workers! 

Let the fires go cold—

Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—

Let the iron run wild

Like a red bramble on the floors—

Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine 

And the shrapnel lying on the wharves—

Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom—

Come, 

With your ashen lives, 

Your lives like dust in your hands. 

I call upon you, workers. 

It is not yet light 

But I beat upon your doors. 

You say you await the Dawn

But I say you are the Dawn. 

Come, in your irresistible unspent force 

And make new light upon the mountains. 

You have turned deaf ears to others—

Me you shall hear. 

Out of the mouths of turbines, 

Out of the turgid throats of engines,

Over the whisling steam, 

You shall hear me shrilly piping. 

Your mills I shall enter like the wind, 

And blow upon your hearts,

Kindling the slow fire. 

They think they have tamed you, workers—

Beaten you to a tool

To scoop up a hot honor 

Till it be cool—

But out of the passion of the red frontiers

A great flower trembles and burns and glows

And each of its petals is a people. 

Come forth, you workers—

Clinging to your stable

And your wisp of warm straw—

Let the fires grow cold,

Let the iron spill out of the troughs, 

Let the iron run wild

Like a red bramble on the floors . . . 

As our forefathers stood on the prairies 

So let us stand in a ring, 

Let us tear up their prisons like grass

And beat them to barricades—

Let us meet the fire of their guns

With a greater fire, 

Till the birds shall fly to the mountains

For one safe bough.