(Song of the American Sons of Labour) <br /> <br />The Song <br /> <br />O WE knew so well, dear Father, <br />When we answered to your call, <br />And the Southern Moloch stricken <br />Shook and tottered to his fall — <br />O we knew so well you loved us, <br />And our hearts beat back to yours <br />With the rapturous adoration <br />That through all the years endures! <br />Mothers, sisters bade us hasten <br />Sweethearts, wives with babe at breast; <br />For the Union, faith and freedom, <br />For our hero of the West! <br />And we wrung forth victory blood-stained <br />From the desperate hands of Crime, <br />And our Cause blazed out Man's beacon <br />Through the endless future time! <br />And forgiven, forever we bade it <br />Cease, that envy, hatred, strife, <br />As he willed, our murdered Father <br />That had sealed his love with life! <br />O dear Father, was it thus, then? <br />Did we this but in a dream? <br />Is it real, this hideous present? <br />Does our suffering only seem? <br />Bend and listen, look and tell us! <br />Are these joyless toilers We? <br />Slaves more wretched, patient, piteous <br />Than the slaves we fought to free! <br />Are these weak, worn girls and women <br />Those whose mothers yet can tell <br />How they kissed and clasped men god-like <br />With fierce faces fronting hell? <br />Bend and listen, look and tell us! <br />Is this silent waste, possessed <br />By bloat thieves and their task-masters, <br />Thy free, thy fair, thy fearless West? <br />Are these Eastern mobs of wage-slaves, <br />Are these cringing debauchees, <br />Sons of those who slung their rifles — <br />Shook the old Flag to the breeze?<br /><br />Francis William Lauderdale Adams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/father-abe/
