When the Leaves Come Out/The Kanawha Striker

by Ralph Hosea Chaplin

THE KANAWHA STRIKER

Good God! Must I now meekly bend my head
And cringe back to that gloom I know so well?
Forget the wrongs my tongue may never tell,
Forget the plea they silenced with their lead,
Forget the hillside strewn with murdered dead
Where once they drove me—mocked me when I fell
All black and bloody by their holes of hell,
While all my loved ones wept uncomforted?

Is this the land my fathers fought to own—
Here where they curse me—beaten and alone?
But God, it's cold! My children sob and cry!
Shall I go back into the mines and wait,
And lash the conflagration of my hate—
Or shall I stand and fight them till I die?