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146
Shenandoah
There is only one way now, only the way of the red tubes and the great price.


Well...

Maybe the morning sun is a five-cent yellow balloon,

And the evening stars the joke of a God gone crazy.

Maybe the mothers of the world,

And the life that pours from their torsal folds—

Maybe it's all a lie sworn by liars,

And a God with a cackling laughter says:

"I, the Almighty God,

I have made all this,

I have made it for kaisers, czars, and kings."


Three times ten million men say: No.

Three times ten million men say:

God is a God of the People.

And the God who made the world

And fixed the morning sun,
And flung the evening stars,
And shaped the baby hands of life,

This is the God of the Four Brothers;

This is the God of bleeding France and bleeding Russia;

This is the God of the people of Britain and America.


The graves from the Irish Sea to the Caucasus peaks are ten times a million.

The stubs and stumps of arms and legs, the eyesockets empty, the cripples, ten times a million.

The crimson thumb-print of this anathema is on the door panels of a hundred million homes.

Cows gone, mothers on sick-beds, children cry a hunger and no milk comes in the noon-time or at night.