Revolutionary Poetry

[UncreativeName]

I have always liked poetry that was somewhat of a call to arms or for chang. My favourite revolutionary poem is The Internationale:

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.

Eugene Pottier

Anyone here have any personal favourites? Just thought it would be nice to share some poems of similar theme, see if there are any none of us, or at least I, have never read.

By the way, please no one post Beasts of England.

[Avalive]

Thanks for sharing

[durga]

I like 'Good Morning Revolution' by Langston Hughes..I didn't get it anywhere online though..

[mono]

I like 'Good Morning Revolution' by Langston Hughes..I didn't get it anywhere online though..

I also very much enjoyed Hughes' Good Morning Revolution. Sadly, I think all of the works inside that collection never published during the poet's lifetime, due to political and racial suppression. Do you have any favorite poems from that book?

[R. Schmidt]

I have always thought that this poem by Percy Shelley was pretty radical in its intent: it wasn't published until after Shelley and King George the third were both dead. NOTE: I copied this from this website, but the title given to it is wrong, it's "England in 1819" not "English in 1819"! Should I contact the webmaster??

Sonnet: England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, -
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, -mud from a muddy spring, -
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, -
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, -
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless -a book sealed;
A Senate, -Time's worst statute unrepealed, -
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

[metaxy99]

Hey, neat thread.

I would propose any number of poems by Paul Eluard - November 1936, Liberty, or this touching eulogy titled 'Gabriel Peri':

A man has died who had no other shield
Than his arms open wide to life
A man has died who had no other road
Than the road where rifles are hated
A man has died who battles still
Against death against oblivion

For all the things he wanted
We wanted too
We want them to-day
Happiness to be the light
Within the heart within the eyes
And justice on earth

There are words that help us to live
And they are plain words
The word warmth the word trust
Love justice and the word freedom
The word child and the word kindness
The names of certain flowers and certain fruits
The word courage and the word discover
The word brother and the word comrade
The name of certain lands and villages
The names of women and friends
Now let us add the name of Peri
Peri has died for all that gives us life
Let's call him friend his chest is bullet-torn
But thanks to him we know each other better
Let's call each other friend his hope lives on.


A lot of poems by Audre Lorde would qualify as well. Stations, Diaspora, A Question of Climate, Vietnam Addenda - you might say her entire body of work is tinged with protest. Hard to choose, but one of the best of her more overtly protest works is a moving and provocative poem called 'The Day They Eulogized Mahalia.'

[genoveva]

Edna St. Vincent Millay has some great ones like Concientious Objector. I also came across a neat anthology titled: A Chorus for Peace: A Global Anthology of Poetry by Women edited by Arnold, Ballif-Spanvill & Tracy.

[SaadAhmedBaghi]

Man Of People
Friend Of Lenin
My Dear Leader
Comrade Stalin

[madem514]

very nice poem!

[stlukesguild]

very nice poem!

Yeah... Perhaps we can find a nice ballade to Hitler to go along with it. Something that stresses what a good vegetarian he was, how he loved animals...

[blazeofglory]

A telling poem. I got moved.

[jikan myshkin]

howl- alen ginsberg

[jikan myshkin]

uncreativename: i love that name, made me laugh, thank you

[Trystan]

I like 'The Blacksmith' by Arthur Rimbaud. Can't find it online though.

[Nikola]

THE LAST LETTER
The fight is hard and pitiless
The fight is epic, as they say.
I fell. Another takes my place -
Why single out a name?
After the firing squad - the worms.
Thus does the single logic go.
But in the storm we'll be with you,
My people, for we loved you so.

23 July 1942
(Translated by P. Tempest - 1954)

This is one of the best bulgarian revolutionary poets - Nikola Vapcarov. He wrote this ,hours before his execution. He was killed because he was a socialist !