When the Leaves Come Out/The Mine Guard

by Ralph Hosea Chaplin

THE MINE GUARD

You cur! How can you stand so calm and still
And careless while your Brothers strive and bleed?
What hellish, cruel, crime-polluted creed
Has taught you thus to do your master's will?
Whose traitor dole has damned your soul until
You lick his boots and fawn to do his deed—
You pander to his lust of boundless greed
And guard him while his cohorts crush and kill?

Your sneaking crimes are like a rotten flood—
The beating, raping, murdering you've done—
You sycophantic coward with a gun:
The worms would scorn your carcass in the mud;
A bitch would blush to hail you as a son—
You loathsome outcast, red with human blood!