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

In Trafalgar Square
(From “Songs of the Army of the Night”)

Francis W. L. Adams

(English poet and rebel, 1862–1893; his life, a brief struggle with poverty and disease, was ended by his own hand)

THE STARS shone faint through the smoky blue;

The church-bells were ringing;

Three girls, arms laced, were passing through,

Tramping and singing.

Their heads were bare; their short skirts swung

As they went along;

Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up, as they sung

Their defiant song.

It was not too clean, their feminine lay,

But it thrilled me quite

With its challenge to task-master villainous day

And infamous night,

With its threat to the robber rich, the proud,

The respectable free.

And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,

And they shouted to me!

“Girls, that’s the shout, the shout we will utter

When, with rifles and spades,

We stand, with the old Red Flag aflutter,

On the barricades!”