Unit five

THE SONG OF THE WAGE-SLAVE

By Ernest Jones (1819-1869)

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 labour's arms, what labour raised, For labour'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, But 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.