“Us the Hoboes and Dreamers”
Lyrics: Covington Hall.
Tune: Unknown.
“Written when we Lumberjacks, Sodbusters, Hoboes and Dreamers were fighting the Lumber Barons of Louisiana and Texas, with our backs to the wall, back in 1910-14.”
We shall laugh to scorn your power that now holds the South in awe,
We shall trample on your customs and shall spit upon your law;
We shall come up from our shanties to your burdened banquet hall—
We shall tum your wine to wormwood, your honey into gall.
We shall go where wail the children—where, from your race-killing mills,
Flows a bloody stream of profits to your curst insatiate tills;
We shall tear from them your drivers in our shamed and angered pride,
In the fierce and frenzied fury of a fatherhood denied.
We shall tell your sisters on you, those you trapped onto your hells,
Where the mothers instinct’s stifled and no earthly beauty dwells;
We shall call them from the living dead, the death of life you gave,
To sing our class’s triumph o’er your cruel system’s grave.
We shall strip them of their epaulets, the panderers who fight
Your wars against the workers for a bone on which to bite.
We shall batter down your prisons, we shall set your chain gangs free,
We shall drive you from the mountain side, the valley, plain and sea.
We shall hunt around the fences where our oxmen sweat and gape,
Till they stampede down your stockades in their panic to escape;
We shall steal up through the darkness, we shall prowl the wood and town,
Till they waken to their power and arise and ride you down.
We shall send the message to them on a whisper down the night,
And shall cheer as warrior women drive your helots to the fight;
We shall use your guile against you, all the cunning you have taught,
All the wisdom of the serpent to attain the ending sought.
We shall come as comes the cyclone-in the stillness we shall form—
From the calm your terror has fashioned we shall hurl on you the storm;
We shall strike when least expected, when you deem Toil’s route complete,
And crush you and your gunmen ’neath our brogan-shodded feet.
We shall laugh to scorn your power that now holds the South in awe,
We shall trample on your customs, we shall spit upon your law;
We shall outrage all your temples, we shall blaspheme all your gods—
We shall turn your Slavepen over as the plowman turns the clods!