Wandering children, lonely, lost, Drift away on the human sea, While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed And drunk in a revelry! Ah, know we not in their feasting halls Where the loud laugh echoes again, That brick and stone in the mortared walls Are the bones of murdered men? Slowly murdered! By day and day, The beauty and strength are reft, Till the Man is sapped and sucked away, And a Human Rind is left! A Human Rind, with old, thin hair, And old, thin voice to pray For alms in the bitter winter air,-- A knife at his heart alway. And the pure in heart are impure in flesh For the cost of a little food: Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh, Let these be accounted good. For these are they who in bitter blame Eat the bread whose salt is sin; Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame, Till their hearts are seared within. The cowardly jests of a hundred years Will be thrown where they pass to-night, Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears, The saddest of human blight. Do we forget them, these broken ones, That our watch to-night is set? Nay, we smile in the face of the year that comes _Because we do not forget._ We do not forget the tramp on the track, Thrust out in the wind-swept waste, The curses of Man upon his back, And the curse of God in his face. The stare in the eyes of the buried man Face down in the fallen mine; The despair of the child whose bare feet ran To tread out the rich man's wine; The solemn light in the dying gaze Of the babe at the empty breast, The wax accusation, the sombre glaze Of its frozen and rigid rest; They are all in the smile that we turn to the east To welcome the Century's dawn; They are all in our greeting to Night's high priest, As we bid the Old Year begone. Begone and have done, and go down and be dead Deep drowned in your sea of tears! We smile as you die, for we wait the red Morn-gleam of a hundred-years That shall see the end of the age-old wrong,-- The reapers that have not sown,-- The reapers of men with their sickles strong Who gather, but have not strown. For the earth shall be his and the fruits thereof And to him the corn and wine, Who labors the hills with an even love And knows not "thine and mine." And the silk shall be to the hand that weaves, The pearl to him who dives, The home to the builder; and all life's sheaves To the builder of human lives. And none go blind that another see, Or die that another live; And none insult with a charity That is not theirs to give. For each of his plenty shall freely share And take at another's hand: Equals breathing the Common Air And toiling the Common Land.