By Lilian Millar
Was it only for this we were born ?
The yearning, the hunger, the fret,
The toil of the body and the strife of the soul.
Our blood in exchange for a pitiful dole !
We are men but they treat us as beasts.
They sneer at the vice and the woe.
Herded and branded like sheep in the pen,
O, poverty crushes the manhood of men !
Cant and injustice and wrong
(The wine and the roses are fair)
The laws that pretend what is righteous and just
Will wink while they trample us into the dust.
We are down in the heart of the earth.
Are out on the sea and the plain ;
With backs that are bent, and with toil hardened hands
We pay for the lordling to hold his broad lands.
We pay for the corn and the wine,
The children are bound on the wheel ;
The women are weary and haggard and sad--
It is only the rich who have time to be glad.
Go Into the slums and the parks,
Go down by the river's dark tide,
In the silence of dawn and the darkness of night;
Go, look, and dare tell us of class and of right.
We rot like a plague in the towns,
And life is more bitter than death;
Our manhood is trampled by greed's careless feet.
Our women are bought to be cast on the street.
They are starving at needle and loom,
Are chained to the forge and the mill ;
Do you wonder at babes that are feeble and pale
Or question the children so listless and frail ?
O, robbers of virtue and youth,
The bestial, the fool, and the truth,
When we rise in the might that shall scatter and slay
To the uttermost coin that you owe you shall pay.
Notes
From the South Australian Newspaper The Daily Herald 28 Jun 1913 Page 4.
Top