________________________________________________
Title: Night-Riders
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
[Night-riders: This clan of tobacco outlaws in Kentucky during 1907-1908 cast such disgrace on her good name as years will not suffice to erase.]
See them mount in the dead of night--
Men, three hundred strong!
Armed and silent, masked from the light,
Speeding swartly along.
What is their errand? manly fight?
Clench with a manly foe?
I would rather be dead of wrong
Than ride among them so.
See them enter the sleeping town.
Hear the warning shot!
Keep to your beds, free men--down, down!
Dare you to move?--dare not!
These are your masters--these who crown
Black Anarchy their king--
I would rather my hand should rot
Than have it do this thing.
See them steal to the house they seek--
Brave men, O, brave all!
There lies a sick boy, fever-weak;
Who comes forth at call?
A woman? "Go in, you bitch!" they reek.
"Give us the old man out!"
Rather my bitten tongue should fall
To palsy than so shout.
And--they have him, "the old man," now,
Bound--with nine beside.
One, a Judge of the Law's grave brow,
Sworn by it to bide.
"Lash him!"--a hundred lashes plow
A free-born back with pain!
God, shall we let such cowards ride
And burn and beat and stain?
O the shame, and the bitter shame,
That thus, across our land,
Crime can arise and write her name
Broad, with a bloody hand!
O the shame, and the bitter shame
Upon our chivalry.
I would rather have led the band
That diced on Calvary.
So, Night-errants, ride on and ride--
Avenging, wrongly, wrong.
But when the children at your side
Grow lawless up and strong;
When at their drunken hands you've died
As beasts beside your door,
You will repent, God knows it--long,
These nights to Hell made o'er.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: Night-Riders
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
