Explore "Awakened!" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Slowly the People waken; they have been, / Like weary soldiers, sleeping in their tents, / While traitors tiptoed through the silent camp / Intent on plunder. Suddenly a sound- / A careless movement of too bold a thief- / Starts one dull sleeper; then another stirs, / A third cries out a warning, and at last / The people are awake! Oh, when as one / The many rise, united and alert, / With Justice for their motto, they reflect / The mighty force of God's Omnipotence. / And nothing stands before them. Lusty Greed, / Tyrannical Corruption long in power, / And smirking Cant (whose right hand robs and slays / So that the left may dower Church and School), / Monopoly, whose mandate took from Toil / The Mother Earth, that Idleness might loll / And breed the Monster of Colossal Wealth- / All these must fall before the gathering Force / Of public indignation. That old strife / Which marks the progress of each century, / The war of Right with Might, is on once more, / And shame to him who does not take his stand.
This is the weightiest moment of all time, / And on the issues of the present hour / A nation's honour and a country's peace, / A People's future, ay, a World's, depends.