In the dream of your downy couches, through the shades of your pampered sleep,
Give ear, you can hear it coming, the tide that is steady and deep—
Give ear, for the sound is growing, from the desert and dungeon and den:
The tramp of the marching millions, the March of the Hungry Men.

As once the lean-limbed Spartans at Locris' last ascent,
As William's Norman Legions through the Sussex meadows went,
As Wolfe assailed the mountain, as Sherman led the way
From Fulton to Savannah; as they and more than they;

So comes another army your wit cannot compute;
The man-at-arms self-fashioned, the man you made the brute,
From farm and sweatshop gathered, from factory, mine and mill,
With lever and shears and auger, dibble, drift and drill.

They bear not sword or rifle, yet their ladders are on your walls;
Though the break is turned to a jumper, the jumper to overalls;
They come from the locomotive, the cab and the cobbler's bench;
They are armed with the pick and the jack-plane, the sledge and the ax and the wrench.

And some come empty-handed, with fingers gnarled and strong,
And some come bent with sorrow, and some sway drunk with song,
But all that you thought were buried are stirring and lithe and quick,
And they carry a brass-band scepter: the brass composing stick.

Through the depths of the devil's darkness, with the distant stars for light,
They are coming, the while you slumber, and they come with the might of Right.
On a morrow—perhaps tomorrow—you will waken and see, and then
You will hand the keys of the cities to the ranks of the Hungry Men.