Men have outgrown the worthless creed,
Which bade them
deem it God's good will,
That labor sweat
and starve to fill,
And glut the purse of idle greed.
They have outgrown the poor content
That breeds oppression.
Forged by pain,
Mind links with
mind in one great chain
Of protest and of argument.
And by the hand of progress hurled,
This mighty chain
of human thought,
In silence and
in anguish wrought,
Encompasses the pulsing world.
And he who will not form a link
Of new conditions
soon to be,
Ere long must
stand aghast to see,
Old systems toppling down the brink.
They cannot and they shall not last.
The broader impulse
of the day
Will gain and
grow and sweep away
The rank injustice of the past.
The purport of the hour is vast.
The world needs
justice. It demands
United hearts,
united hands.
The day of charity is past.
Let no man think he can despoil
And rob his kind
by trick and fraud,
And at the last
make peace with God
By tossing alms to honest toil.
More labor for the selfish few;
More leisure for
the burdened mass;
These things shall
surely come to pass,
As old conditions change to new.
They change thro' strain and strike
and strife,
The worst but
speeds the final best,
Work for all men--for
all men rest,
And time to taste the joys of life.
Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago : W. B. Conkey, 1902.
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