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THE SONG OF THE HEMP, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The stubbled hemp-field called the wind
Last Line: "beneath the moon's white tide."
Subject(s): Lynching


In a certain northern country called Canada, in the savage year 1919, certain barbarians took one
hour and eleven minutes of God's time to hang an Italian named Antonio Sprecage.

THE stubbled Hemp-field called the wind
That passed with moistened eyes:
"Go down to Bordeaux Gaol and find
Where he, the dead man, lies.
Tell him my fields are shamed to-night
Beneath the autumn skies.

"Tell him if I had known my strands
Would weave a hangman's coil
My seed had never groped its hands
Up through the choking soil,
My fields had never burned at night
Their lamps of silver oil.

"Was it for this I drank the sun
Out of the Noon's high cup?
Was it for this I lay against
The mammalled wind, to sup?
Was it for this I braved the dark
Till the bronze moon came up?

"Blest is the golden wheat that gives
Red blood to good or ill,
And blest the weed that wastes her seed
Upon the gypsied hill.
But I must stand with cursed hand,
For I was born to kill.

"To-night a cooling summer breeze
Blows down from Saint Hilaire.
It blows to Bordeaux Gaol and through
Her chamber of despair.
It blows across a grave whose sides
A coat of quick-lime wear.

"It blows on your own sleeping boy
And cools his fevered head;
Perhaps, when you are gone, he'll go
Less early to his bed --
When you are gone, some time, at dawn
His hands may too be red.

"Or yet his hands may not be red
But clean of ill design,
And still he'll swing -- a breathless thing --
Upon the hangman's line,
And join the guiltless host who poured
Their pale unripened wine.

"I am the Hemp; God made me strong
To swing the flowing sail,
To hold the mast against the blast
He made me stout and hale.
And now He walks my stubbled fields
And weeps for Bordeaux Gaol.

"They took my strands and made the rope;
They made it white and strong --
Perhaps he too had done the same,
In Naples, to a song,
Before his strangely-ventured life
Had stumbled on the Wrong.

"I felt my fibre 'round his neck:
His veins grew hard and black --
His tongue flew out and, with strong hands,
They could not force it back --
It was a shame to keep outside
Men waiting with a sack.

"An hour he battled with my rope --
An endless hour of Time.
It was a shame to keep outside
The men with sack and lime.
And yet I held so firm, his mouth
Was dribbling with his slime.

"Was it for this I drank the sun
Out of the Noon's high cup?
Was it for this I lay against
The mammalled wind, to sup?
Was it for this I braved the dark
Till the bronze moon came up?"

The stubbled Hemp-field called the wind
That passed with hurried stride:
"Go down to Bordeaux Gaol and find
The man they killed," she cried --
"Tell him my fields lie shamed to-night
Beneath the moon's white tide."





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