THE VOICES OF THE PEOPLE
Oh! I hear the people calling through the day time and the night time,
They are calling, they are crying for the coming of the right time.
It behooves you, men and women, it behooves you to be heeding,
For there lurks a note of menace underneath their plaintive pleading.
Let the land usurpers listen, let the greedy-hearted ponder,
On the meaning of the murmur, rising here and swelling yonder,
Swelling louder, waxing stronger, like a storm-fed stream that courses
Through the valleys, down abysses, growing, gaining with new forces.
Day by day the river widens, that great river of opinion,
And its torrent beats and plunges at the base of greed’s dominion.
Though you dam it by oppression and fling golden bridges o’er it,
Yet the day and hour advances when in fright you’ll flee before it.
Yes, I hear the people calling, through the night time and the day time,
Wretched toilers in life’s autumn, weary young ones in life’s May time—
They are crying, they are calling for their share of work and pleasure;
You are heaping high your coffers while you give them scanty measure,—
You have stolen God’s wide acres, just to glut your swollen purses—
Oh! restore them to His children ere their pleading turns to curses.
THE WORLD GROWS BETTER
Oh! the earth is full of sinning
And of trouble and of woe,
But the devil makes an inning
Every time we say it’s so.
And the way to set him scowling,
And to put him back a pace,
Is to stop this stupid growling,
And to look things in the face.
If you glance at history’s pages,
In all lands and eras known,
You will find the buried ages
Far more wicked than our own.
As you scan each word and letter.
You will realise it more,
That the world to-day is better
Than it ever was before.
There is much that needs amending
In the present time, no doubt;
There is right that needs amending,
There is wrong needs crushing out.
And we hear the groans and curses
Of the poor who starve and die,
While the men with swollen purses
In the place of hearts go by.
But in spite of all the trouble
That obscures the sun to-day,
Just remember it was double
In the ages passed away.
And those wrongs shall all be righted,
Good shall dominate the land,
For the darkness now is lighted
By the torch in Science’s hand.