No dungeon, no gallows can scare me Nor will I be frightened by pain

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Revolution

Words : Joseph Bovshover / Music : Dick Gaughan

I come like a comet new born

Like the sun that arises at morning

I come like the furious tempest 

That follows a thundercloud's warning

I come like the fiery lava

From cloud-covered mountains volcanic

I come like a storm from the north

That the oceans awake to in panic

I come because tyranny planted

My seed in the hot desert sand

I come because masters have kindled 

My fury with every command

I come because man cannot murder

The life-giving seed in his veins

I come because liberty cannot

Forever be fettered by chains

I come because tyrants imagine

That mankind is only their throne

I come because peace has been nourished 

By bullets and cannon alone

I come because one world is two 

And we face one another with rage

I come because guards have been posted 

To keep out the hope of the age

From earliest times the oppressed 

Have awaked me and called me to lead them

I guided them out of enslavement

And brought them to high roads of freedom

I marched at the head of their legions

And hailed a new world at its birth

And now I shall march with the peoples

Until they unfetter the earth

And you, all you sanctified moneybags

Bandits anointed and crowned

Your counterfeit towers of justice

And ethics will crash to the ground

I'll send my good sword through your hearts

That have drained the world's blood in their lust

Smash all your crowns and your sceptres

And trample them into the dust

I'll rip off your rich purple garments 

And tear them to rags and to shreds

Never again will their glitter

Be able to turn people's heads

At last your cold world will be robbed of

It's proud hypocritical glow

For we shall dissolve it as surely 

As sunlight dissolves the deep snow

I'll tear down your cobweb morality

Shatter the old chain of lies

Catch all your blackhooded preachers

And choke them as though they were flies

I'll put a quick end to your heavens

Your gods that are deaf to all prayer

Scatter your futile old spirits

And clean up the earth and the air

And though you may choke me and shoot me 

And hang me your toil is in vain

No dungeon, no gallows can scare me

Nor will I be frightened by pain

Each time I'll arise from the earth

And break through all your weapons of doom

Until you are finished forever

Until you are dust in the tomb.

(The text is a poem by Joseph Bovshover and is from 'American Labour Songs of the 19th Century'. I wrote the music for it in (East) Berlin during the 1982 Festival of Political Song.)