The Feast of Belshazzar
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THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR
By Voltairine de Cleyre
- Hark! Low down you will hear
- The storm in the underground!
- Listen, Tyrants, and fear!
- Quake at that muffled sound!
- "Heavens, that mocked our dust,
- Smile on, in your pitiless blue!
- Silent as you are to us,
- So silent are we to you!
- "Churches that scourged our brains!
- Priests that locked fast our hands!
- We planted the torch in your chains:
- Now gather the burning brands!
- "States that have given us law,
- When we asked for the right to earn bread!
- The Sword that Damocles saw
- By a hair swings over your head!
- "What ye have sown ye shall reap:
- Teardrops, and Blood, and Hate,
- Gaunt gather before your Seat,
- And knock at your palace gate!
- "There are murderers on your Thrones!
- There are thieves in your Justice-halls!
- White Leprosy cancers their stones,
- And gnaws at their worm-eaten walls!
- "And the Hand of Belshazzar's Feast
- Writes over, in flaming light,
- Thought's Kingdom no more to the Priest;
- Nor the Law of Right unto Might."
- Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Feast of Belshazzar,” Mother Earth 9, no. 1 (March 1914): 4.
