See its pallid face uplifted from the whirling factory wheels, Tear-stained with the grief and anguish of a baby brain that reels, Tortured in life's budding springtime, toiling on with stifled cries, Seeing, through its tears refracted, rippling cascades, azure skies; Skies and birds and flowery meadows made for children wealthy-born, While God's outcasts, with their parents, robbed and drudging, live forlorn, Men in whom the fires of hope have sunk into a sordid spark, Mothers rearing helpless infants for the brothel's dawnless dark. While this world seems far too crowded to provide us work for all, Acres spread their untilled bosoms, while the nations rise and fall. Nature's storehouse, made for all men, is monopolized by some, Robbing labor of its produce, making almshouse, jail, and slum. Side by side with art and progress creeps the haggard spectre, Want-- Creeps the frightful phantom, Hunger, with its bloodless body gaunt. Wider, wider spreads the chasm 'twixt the wealthy and the poor, Social discontent declaring that such wrongs cannot endure. And this yawning of the chasm is the curse of every race, As it saps and kills its manhood ere it reach the zenith-place; Spartan valor, Grecian learning, Roman honor had their day, But land plunder rose among them, dooming death by slow decay. Shall we wait for evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs, While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social thongs? Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right, Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this stygian night. Locksley Hall has now a master who would claim the earth for all, Who would make the titled idler cease to rob his tenant-thrall; Wreck the Church and State if need be (better such in time will rise), But who from this glorious purpose nevermore will turn his eyes-- Never, till the arms of nature clasp in joy her outcast child, Long since driven from the meadow and the dell and woodland wild, Till to each belongs the produce of his hand and heart and brain, And glad heralds of millennium thrill along our path of pain. Though the world has piled its fagots round the great and good and brave; Thrust its Socrates the hemlock, scourged its Jesus to the grave; Though its sneer has chilled the tender, and its frown has cursed the good, While its Nero sways the sceptre and its Emmett dies in blood; Yet in Truth there is a power that through ceaseless cycles slow Will inscribe the doom of Error in an ever-fadeless glow, That will trample on oppression, burst the chains and crush the throne, Rearing on the blood and ruin justice-reign from zone to zone.