Comrades, what matter the watch-night tells
That a New Year comes or goes?
What to us are the crashing bells
That clang out the Century's close?
What to us is the gala dress?
The whirl of the dancing feet?
The glitter and blare in the laughing press,
And din of the merry street?
Do we not know that our brothers die
In the cold and the dark to-night?
Shelterless faces turned toward the sky
Will not see the New Year's light!
Wandering children, lonely, lost,
Drift away on the human sea,
While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed
And drunk in a revelry!
Ah, know we not in their feasting halls
Where the loud laugh echoes again,
That brick and stone in the mortared walls
Are the bones of murdered men?
Slowly murdered! By day and day,
The beauty and strength are reft,
Till the Man is sapped and sucked away,
And a Human Rind is left!
A Human Rind, with old, thin hair,
And old, thin voice to pray
For alms in the bitter winter air,—
A knife at his heart alway.
And the pure in heart are impure in flesh
For the cost of a little food:
Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh,
Let these be accounted good.
For these are they who in bitter blame
Eat the bread whose salt is sin;
Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame,
Till their hearts are seared within.
The cowardly jests of a hundred years
Will be thrown where they pass to-night,
Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears,
The saddest of human blight.