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But I know, for I have seen masked men with the rope, and the eyeless things that howl against the sun, and I have ridden beside the hangman at midnight.
They kicked him, they cursed him, they pushed him, they spat on his cheeks and his brow,
They stabbed his ears with foul oaths, they smeared his clean face with the pus of their ulcerous words.
And nobody saw or heard them. But I call you to witness John Brown, I call you to witness, you Molly Macguires,
And you Albert Parsons, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, August Spies,
And you Leo Frank, kinsman of Jesus, and you, Joe Hill, twice my germane in the rage of the song and the fray,
And all of you, sun-dark brothers, and all of you harriers of torpid faiths, hasteners of the great day, propitiators of the holy deed,
I call you all to the bar of the dawn to give witness if this is not what they do in America when they wake up men at midnight to hang them until they're dead.
They kicked him, they cursed him, they pushed him, they spat on his cheeks and his brow,
They stabbed his ears with foul oaths, they smeared his clean face with the pus of their ulcerous words.
And nobody saw or heard them. But I call you to witness John Brown, I call you to witness, you Molly Macguires,
And you Albert Parsons, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, August Spies,
And you Leo Frank, kinsman of Jesus, and you, Joe Hill, twice my germane in the rage of the song and the fray,
And all of you, sun-dark brothers, and all of you harriers of torpid faiths, hasteners of the great day, propitiators of the holy deed,
I call you all to the bar of the dawn to give witness if this is not what they do in America when they wake up men at midnight to hang them until they're dead.
III.
Under a railroad trestle, under the heart-rib of Progress, they circled his neck with the noose, but never a word he spoke.
Never a word he uttered, and they grew weak from his silence,
For the terror of death is strongest upon the men with the rope,
Never a word he uttered, and they grew weak from his silence,
For the terror of death is strongest upon the men with the rope,
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