Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

The Dead to the Living

Freiligrath, Ferdinand

Ferdinand Freiligrath

(German revolutionary poet, 1810–1876. Part of a poem written after the uprising of 1848, in Berlin, when the people marched past the palace-gates with their slain, and compelled the king to stand upon the balcony and take off his hat to the bodies)

WITH bullets through and through our breast—our forehead split with pike and spear,

So bear us onward shoulder high, laid dead upon a blood-stained bier;

Yea, shoulder-high above the crowd, that on the man that bade us die,

Our dreadful death-distorted face may be a bitter curse for aye;

That he may see it day and night, or when he wakes, or when he sleeps,

Or when he opes his holy book, or when with wine high revel keeps;

That always each disfeatured face, each gaping wound his sight may sear,

And brood above his bed of death, and curdle all his blood with fear!