Classic Poem

The land it is the landlord's,
The trader's is the sea,
The ore the usurer's coffer fills —
But what remains for me?
The engine whirls for master's craft;
The steel shines to defend,
With labor's arms, what labor raised,
For labor's foe to spend.
The camp, the pulpit, and the law
For rich men's sons are free;
Theirs, theirs the learning, art, and arms —
But what remains for me?
The coming hope, the future day,
When wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now .

I pay for all their learning,
I toil for all their ease;
They render back, in coin for coin,
Want, ignorance, disease:
Toil, toil — and then a cheerless home,
Where hungry passions cross;
Eternal gain to them that give
To me eternal loss!
The hour of leisured happiness
The rich alone may see;
The playful child, the smiling wife —
But what remains for me?
They render back, those rich men,
A pauper's niggard fee,
Mayhap a prison — then a grave,
And think they are quits with me;
But not a fond wife's heart that breaks,
A poor man's child that dies,
We score not on our hollow cheeks
And in our sunken eyes;
We read it there, where'er we meet,
And as the sun we see,
Each asks, " The rich have got the earth,
And what remains for me? "

We bear the wrong in silence,
We store it in our brain;
They think us dull, they think us dead,
But we shall rise again:
A trumpet through the lands will ring;
A heaving through the mass;
A trampling through their palaces
Until they break like glass:
We'll cease to weep by cherished graves,
From lonely homes we'll flee;
And still, as rolls our million march,
Its watchword brave shall be —
The coming hope, the future day,
When wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now.