If you heard them down here you would cry, “The reward of such is damnation,”
If you heard them, I say, your song of “rewarded hereafter” would fail....
Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to me
To me as I am,—the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker?
To me upon whom God and science alike have stamped “failure”,
To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt and sorrows?
To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan?
To me as I am—for me as I am—not dying but living;
Not my future—my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no one?
In the midst of this rushing of phantoms—of Gods, of Science, of Logic,