it leaps in its glee.
Nay, babes unborn, 'neath the mother's breast
And given and pledged to thy cause and to thee!

Banner of freedom and freedom's peace.
Float in thy beauty, in sign of the day
When ravage of power and conquest shall cease,
And mouldering tyranny pass away.
Who would not all for thy promise give?
As I gaze on the fools, one wish have I--
To love thee and honor thee while I live,
And fold thee around me when I must die!

=The Agitator=

Where hurrying thousands meet,
And poor in living streams on either hand.
Amidst the richest street,
With set and stubborn face he takes his stand.
The lesson to repeat
Of evil days and acts which curse the land.

Indifference cools him not;
And jeers and blows he takes, perchance, beside.
Brave, he accepts his lot;
At worst he meets it with a martyr's pride.
To bear, he knows not what,
He seeks the crowd and will not be denied.

His voice is loud and strong,
And vigorous gestures add their potent force,
As to the restless throng
He pictures clear corruption's crafty course,
Or challenges the wrong
Which in some unjust privilege finds its source.

A true son of the soil,
And feeling, as the hard-pressed masses feel,
The things which mar and spoil,
And bind life down with bonds as strong as steel,
He knows the men who toil,
And truth to these he can most clear reveal.

No knotty theories
He offers to the listeners who attend,
Or generalities,
Which glitter with the gilt that fine words lend;
He sets forth what he sees
So simply that who hears can comprehend.

The deep philosopher,
The pedant wise, whose wisdom makes him cold.
Instructs, but cannot stir
The heart of work, whose hope is tried and old;
But this one strives to spur
The rebel in the blood and make it bold.

He lifts the common thought,
And e'en the common heart up to the light;
Till, by his teaching wrought
To understand their wrongs and know their might
Plain men at last are brought
To rouse in truceless struggle for the right.

End of Project Gutenberg's Selected Poems, by William Francis Barnard

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED POEMS ***

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