Who does not hear the tramp Of thousands speeding along Of either sex and various stamp, Sickly, crippled, or strong, Walking, limping, creeping From court, and alley, and lane, But all in one direction sweeping, Like rivers that seek the main ? Who does not see them sally From mill, and garret, and room, In lane, and court, and alley, From homes in poverty's lowest valley, Furnished with shuttle and loom Poor slaves of Civilization's galley And in the road and footways rally, As if for the day of doom?
Some, of hardly human form,
Stunted, crooked, and crippled by toil; Dingy with smoke and dust and oil, And smirched besides with vicious soil, Clustering, mustering, all in a swarm. Father, mother, and careful child, Looking as if it had never smiled The seamstress, lean, and weary, and wan, With only the ghosts of garments on The weaver, her sallow neighbor,
The grim and sooty artisan;
Every soul — child, woman, or man, or dies — by labor.
Stirred by an overwhelming zeal, And social impulse, a terrible throng! Leaving shuttle, and needle, and wheel,
Furnace, and grindstone, spindle, and reel, Thread, and yarn, and iron, and steel- Yea, rest and the yet untasted meal Gushing, rushing, crushing along, A very torrent of Man!
Urged by the sighs of sorrow and wrong, Grown at last to a hurricane strong,
Stop its course who can!
Stop who can its onward course
And irresistible moral force; O! vain and idle dream! For surely as men are all akin, Whether of fair or sable skin, According to Nature's scheme, That human movement contains within A blood-power stronger than steam.
Onward, onward, with hasty feet, They swarm and westward still Masses born to drink and eat,
But starving amidst Whitechapel's meat, And famishing down Cornhill!
Through the Poultry - but still unfed Christian charity, hang your head! Hungry-passing the Street of Bread ; the Street of Milk ;
beside the Ludgate mart,
So gorgeous, through mechanic art,
With cotton, and wool, and silk!
At last, before that door That bears so many a knock Ere ever it opens to sick or poor, Like sheep they huddle and flock
And would that all the good and wise Could see the million of hollow eyes,
With a gleam derived from hope and the skies, Upturned to the workhouse clock!
O! that the parish powers, Who regulate labor's hours, The daily amount of human trial, Weariness, pain, and self-denial, Would turn from the artificial dial That striketh ten or eleven,
And go, for once, by that older one That stands in the light of Nature's sun, And takes its time from Heaven!
A SPADE! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will
And here's a ready hand
To ply the needful tool,
And skilled enough, by lessons rough,
In Labor's rugged school.
To hedge, or dig the ditch, To lop or fell the tree,
To lay the swarth on the sultry field,
Or plough the stubborn lea;
The harvest stack to bind, The wheaten rick to thatch,
And never fear in my pouch to find The tinder or the match.
To a flaming barn or farm
My fancies never roam ;
The fire I yearn to kindle and burn Is on the hearth of home; Where children huddle and crouch Through dark long winter days, Where starving children huddle and crouch, To see the cheerful rays, A-glowing on the haggard cheek, And not in the haggard's blaze!
To Him who sends a drought To parch the fields forlorn,
The rain to flood the meadows with mud,
The blight to blast the corn,
To Him I leave to guide
The bolt in its crooked path,
To strike the miser's rick, and show The skies blood-red with wrath.
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will
The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,
The market-team to drive,
Or mend the fence by the cover side, And leave the game alive.
Ay, only give me work,
And then you need not fear That I shall snare his worship's hare, Or kill his grace's deer; Break into his lordship's house,
To steal the plate so rich;
Or leave the yeoman that had a purse To welter in the ditch.
Wherever Nature needs,
Wherever Labor calls,
No job I'll shirk of the hardest work, To shun the workhouse walls; Where savage laws begrudge The pauper babe its breath, And doom a wife to a widow's life, Before her partner's death.
My only claim is this,
With labor stiff and stark By lawful turn my living to earn, Between the light and dark; My daily bread and nightly bed,
My bacon, and drop of beer
But all from the hand that holds the land,
And none from the overseer!
No parish money, or loaf,
No pauper badges for me,
A son of the soil by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.
No alms I ask, give me my task; Here are the arm, the leg,
The strength, the sinews of a man, To work, and not to beg.
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