What have you done, O State,
That the toilers should shout your ways;
Should light up the fires of their hate
If a "traitor" should dare dispraise?
How do you guard the trust
That the people repose in you?
Do you keep to the law of the just,
And hold to the changeless true?
What do you mean when you say
"The home of the free and brave"?
How free are your people, pray?
Have you no such thing as a slave?
What are the lauded "rights,"
Broad-sealed, by your Sovereign Grace?
What are the love-feeding sights
You yield to your subject race?
The rights!—Ah! the right to toil,
That another, idle, may reap;
The right to make fruitful the soil
And a meagre pittance to keep!
The right of a woman to own
Her body, spotlessly pure,
And starve in the street—alone!
The right of the wronged—to endure!
The right of the slave—to his yoke!
The right of the hungry—to pray!
The right of the toiler—to vote
For the master who buys his day!
You have sold the sun and the air!
You have dealt in the price of blood!
You have taken the lion's share
While the lion is fierce for food!
You have laid the load of the strong
On the helpless, the young, the weak!
You have trod out the purple of wrong;—
Beware where its wrath shall wreak!