Ernest Charles Jones (Эрнест Чарльз Джонс)

The Song of the Future

1.

The land it is the landlords';
    The traders' is the sea;
The ore the usurer's coffer fills,
    But what remains for me?
The engine whirls for masters' craft,
    The steel shines to defend,
With labor's arms, what labor raised,
    For labors' foe to spend.
The camp, the pulpit, and the law
    For rich men's sons are free;
Their's, their's is learning, art and arms;
    But what remains for me?
The coming hope, the future day,
    When wrong to right shall bow,
And but a little courage, man!
    To make that future—NOW!

2.

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 leisure happiness
    The rich alone may see;
The playful child, the smiling wife—
    But what remains for me?
The coming hope, the future day,
    When wrong to right shall bow.
And but a little courage, man!
    To make that future—NOW!

3.

They render back, those rich men,
  A pauper's niggard fee,
Mayhap a prison, then a grave,
  And think they're 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, whene'er we meet,
  And, as the sum we see,
Each asks: "the rich have got the earth,
  And what remains for me?"
The coming hope, the future day,
  When wrong to right shall bow,
And but a little courage, man!
  To make that future—NOW!

4.

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 thro' the lands will ring;
  A heaving thro' the mass;
A trampling thro' their palaces,
  Until they break like glass.
We'll cease to weep by cherished graves,
  From lonely homes will 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 but a little courage, man!
  To make that future—NOW!

1. Hymn for Lammas Day
2. Too Soon
3. The Life of a Flower
4. The Painter of Florence
5. The Silent Cell

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