Knowledge had come to him in the night-watches,
And strength with fasting, eloquence with prayer.
He stood a Judge from God before the strangers,
The one just man among his people there.
Strongly he spoke: "Now, Heaven be our witness!
Egypt this day has risen from her sleep.
She has put off her mourning and her silence.
It was no law of God that she should weep.
"It was no law of God nor of the Nations
That in this land, alone of the fair Earth,
The hand that sowed should reap not of its labour,
The heart that grieved should profit not of mirth.
"How have we suffered at the hands of strangers,
Binding their sheaves, and harvesting their wrath!
Our service has been bitter, and our wages
Hunger and pain and nakedness and drouth.
"Which of them pitied us? Of all our princes,
Was there one Sultan listened to our cry?
Their palaces we built, their tombs, their temples.
What did they build but tombs for Liberty?
"To live in ignorance, to die by service;
To pay our tribute and our stripes receive:
This was the ransom of our toil in Eden,
This, and our one sad liberty—to grieve.
"We have had enough of strangers and of princes
Nursed on our knees and lords within our house.
The bread which they have eaten was our children's,
For them the feasting and the shame for us.
"The shadow of their palaces, fair dwellings
Built with our blood and kneaded with our tears,
Darkens the land with darkness of Gehennem,
The lust, the crime, the infamy of years.
"Did ye not hear it? From those muffled windows
A sound of women rises and of mirth.
These are our daughters—ay our sons—in prison,
Captives to shame with those who rule the Earth.
"The silent river by those gardens lapping
To-night receives its burden of new dead,
A man of age sent home with his lord's wages,
Stones to his feet, a grave-cloth to his head.