We have fed you all for a thousand years, And you hail us still unfed, Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth But marks the workers' dead. We have yielded our best to give you rest, And you lie on crimson wool; For if blood be the price of all your wealth Good God, we ha' paid in full! There's never a mine blown skyward now But we're buried alive for you; There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now But we are its ghastly crew; Go reckon our dead by the forges red, And the factories where we spin. If blood be the price of your cursèd wealth Good God, we ha' paid it in! We have fed you all for a thousand years, For that was our doom, you know, From the days when you chained us in your fields To the strike of a week ago. You ha' eaten our lives and our babes and wives, And we're told it's your legal share; But, if blood be the price of your lawful wealth, Good God, we ha' bought it fair. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE VALSE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THREE KINGS OF ORIENT by JOHN HENRY HOPKINS JR. MOUNTAIN LAUREL by ALFRED NOYES THE THREE WARNINGS by HESTER LYNCH (SALUSBURY) PIOZZI SOUTH WIND by SIEGFRIED SASSOON RONDEL by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE TO S.M., A YOUNG AFRICAN PAINTER, ON SEEING HIS WORKS by PHILLIS WHEATLEY |