Classic Poem

" LABOUR ! Labour! Labour! — Toil! Toil! Toil!
With the wearing of the bone and the drowning of the mind;
Sink, like shrivelled parchment, in the flesh-devouring soil!
Pass away unheeded, like the waving of the wind!

" Be the living record of a tyrant's bloody fame;
Form the trodden pathway for a conqueror's career;
Give your breath, ye millions! to elevate his name,
And die! — when ye have shouted it till centuries shall hear.

" By right divine we rule ye. — God made ye but for us — "
Thus cry the lords of nations to the slaves whom they subdue,
Unclasp God's book of nature: its writings read not thus.
Hear! Tramplers on the many! — Hear! Benders to the few!

God gave us hearts of ardour, — God gave us noble forms,
And God has poured around us his paradise of light;
Has he bade us sow the sunshine, and only reap the storms?
Created us in glory, to pass away in night?

No! say the sunny heavens, that smile on all alike;
The waves, that upbear navies, yet hold them in their thrall;
No! shouts the dreadful thunder, that teaches us to strike
The proud, for one usurping what the Godhead meant for all

No! no! — we cry, united by our sufferings' mighty length, —
Ye — ye have ruled for ages — now we will rule as well;
No! No! — we cry, triumphant in our right's resistless strength,
We — we will share your heaven — or ye shall share our hell!