'The Anarchist'
'Wyvis' (i.e. A.C. McCay) in 'The Bulletin', December 7, 1895.

We trumpet a note to the hearts of men,
    A note to stir them to freedom and life,
A note to sound in the darkest den,
    Where sorrow and sickness and sin are rife,
To peal in the poorest of prostrate souls
    And call them back to their own lost right,
To blare and burst where the way-drum rolls,
    And riot and ring in the rage of fight.

A trumpet message to tell the earth
    That its creeds decay and its gods are dead,
That its laws and its lying have lost their worth,
    That the reign of rapine and wrong is sped;
That a sun, blood-red with a cycle's pain,
    Is risen to wither their world away,
That a new light gleams o'er an altered fane,
    That a new soul breathes in our quickened clay.

It is time that men should arise from sleep,
    It is time for the dead to be vivified,
For human creatures to cease to creep
    In object fear 'neath the heels of pride.
On their coward hearts has the cold lain long,
    While their limbs were lax and their lips were dumb;
But their hearts wake warm to the trumpet's song,
    And their arm's uplifted to vengeance come.

The hueless mist of unchanging woe,
    That has folded them round since first they saw,
Is bright with a coming Freedom's glow,
    Is shot with the sheen of the steel they draw.
They are wakening fast to a higher thing
    Than service and suffering, sin and sweat;
And the trump shall call till its deep notes ring
    In the dull slave-souls that are wavering yet.

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