Selected Poems

Excerpt

The Tongues of Toil

Do you hear the call from a hundred lands.
Lords of a dying name?
We are the men of sinewed hands
Whom the earth and the seas acclaim.
We are the hoards that made you lords.
And gathered your gear and spoil.
And we speak with a word that should be heard—
Hark to the tongues of toil!

The power of your hands it falls at last,
The strength of your rule is o'er,
Where the might of a million slaves is massed
To the shouts of a million more.
We rise, we rise, 'neath the western skies,
And the dawns of the east afar;
And our myriads swarm in the southlands warm,
And under the northern star!

We take no thought of the fears you feel,
And the rage you hold at heart,
Nor of all your strength of the gold and steel
Enthroned at the gates of mart.
We have no care for the deeds you dare,
For the force of your armies hurled;
You stand but few, and we challenge you—
Strong men of all the world!

We served as your fools when time was young,
And long, long we forbore.
Glad of the niggard boons you flung,
The least of your ample store;
But the gnawing pain of a starving brain
Is great as the belly need—
We have learned at last from a hungry past
The joys of a rebel deed!

We come, we come, with the force of fate;
We are not weak, but strong.
We parley not, and we cannot wait;
We march with a freeman's song.
We claim for meed what a life we can need
That lives as a life should live—
Not less, not more, From the plenteous store
Which freeborn labors give!

We shall shape a world as a world should be,
With room enough for all.
We will rear a race of the wise and free,
And not of the great and small.
And the heart and the mind of humankind
Shall drink to the dregs of good,
Forgetting the tears of the darker years,
And the curse of bondman's blood.

In vain you soften the voice of greed,
In vain you speak us fair;
The time is late, and we hark nor heed;
In gladness still we dare.
Yield, then, yield to the force we wield,
To the masses of our might;
We are countless strong at the throat of wrong
The warriors of the right!

Yes, we are the captains of the earth
And the warders of the sea—
Of a race new born in nobler birth,
The mighty and the free!
We clasp all hands, to the farthest lands;
We swear by our mother soil,
To take the meed who have done the deed!
Hark to the tongues of toil!
The hangman's hands are dyed with blood,
And all they touch or hold
Is stained and streaked with clotted blood
E'en to his bloody gold—
The coins that are paid for human breath
And the lives which he has sold.

In scarlet hue stand old and new—
His clothes, his board, his bed.
There is blood in the cup he lifts up,
And crimson in his bread;
And e'en his floors and walls and doors
Are marked with gory red.

The hangman's face is dull and grey,
And soulless are his eyes;
That he may live from day to day,
Some fellow-being dies.
The tears of the young are naught to him,
Nor ages stifled cries.

He does not know the sob of woe;
Black fear he does not know;
Hardly a word from his lips are heard,
And his ears heed no appeal....