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A Great Industrial Centre
- SQUALID street after squalid street,
- Endless rows of them, each the same,
- Black dust under your weary feet,
- Dust upon every face you meet,
- Dust in their hearts, too—or so it seems—
- Dust in the place of dreams.
- Spring in her beauty thrills and thrives,
- Here men hardly have heard her name.
- Work is the end and aim of their lives—
- Work, work, work! for children and wives;
- Work for a life which, when it is won,
- Is the saddest under the sun!
- Work—one dark and unending round
- In black dull workshops, out of the light;
- Work that others’ ease may abound,
- Work that delight for them may be found,
- Work without hope, without pause, without peace,
- That only in death can cease.
- Brothers, who live glad lives in the sun,
- What of these men, at work in the night?
- God will ask you what you have done;
- Their lives be required of you—every one—
- Ye, who were glad and who liked life well,
- While they did your work—in hell!
