They are crushed in the coils of your halters;
'Twere well--by the creeds ye have nursed--
That ye send up a cry from your altars,
A mass for the Martyrs Accursed;

A passionate prayer from reprieval
For the Brotherhood not understood--
For the Heroes who died for the evil,
Believing the evil was good.

To the Breakers, the Bold, the Despoilers,
Who dreamed of a world over-thrown...
They who died for the millions of toilers--
Few--fronting the nations alone!

--To the Outlawed of men and the Branded,
Whether hated or hating they fell--
I pledge the devoted, red-handed,
Unfaltering Heroes of Hell!

ACCIDENTALS

"THE EVERLASTING RETURN"

It is dark... so dark, I remember the sun on Chios...
It is still... so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean...

Ten times we had watched the moon
Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters
And round into a full maternity...
For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh
Save the man flesh on either hand
That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea.

The Athenian boy sat on my left...
His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine...
And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian,
Grinning Phildar
With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth.
Many a whip had coiled about him
And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels,
And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun.
He did not sing like the other slaves,
But when a big wind came up he screamed with it.
And always he looked out to sea,
Save when he tore at his fish ends
Or spat across me at the Greek boy, whose mouth was red and apart
like an opened fruit.

We had rowed from dawn and the green galley hard at our stern.
She was green and squat and skulked close to the sea.
All day the tish of their paddles had tickled our ears,
And when night came on
And little naked stars dabbled in the water
And half the crouching moon
Slid over the silver belly of the sea thick-scaled with light,
We heard them singing at their oars...
We who had no breath for song.

There was no sound in our boat
Save the clingle of wrist chains
And the sobbing of the young Greek.
I cursed him that his hair blew in my mouth, tasting salt of the sea...
I cursed him that his oar kept ill time...
Wh