THE FLAMES OF FREEDOM

The Flames of Freedom

By *CATILINE

In every age and cause and clime,

The mightiest weapon of war and time,

For battling down the lords of crime,

Is fire

Fire

Victorious fire.

It shatters armies

With its flashes

Whelming empires

In thunder crashes.

By fire perished Babylon

Nineveh, Thebes and Rome,

Fire burnt down Jerusalem

And flamed Diana’s dome

The glow of blazing Carthage

Lit up the Punic foam,

And fire swept Troy and Sodom

To their everlasting home.

Manifest destiny!

—Must is must—

Ashes to ashes—

Dust to dust.

Trembling, flickering, leaping higher—

Blood and iron—days of ire—

Wrathful, vengeful, higher, higher:

Beauteous, sun-born, cleansing fire.

Balshazzar’s hall it made his tomb,

It flung Napoleon to his doom.

Verily, verily, verily!

The days of the Judgement is nigh—

O! Goddess of Liberty hearken!

You are holding your torch too high!

Lower it!

Lower it!

Lower it!

Lower it before I die. Temples to ashes,

Debt to dust—Fire consumeth

Things accursed.

*Arthur Desmond signed this "CATILINE." London, 1899. Or did he? Find out and get the book "Ragnar Redbeard's Unmasked Poems: Batteries of pristine scorn and revolutionary songs."