page: 68
I
- I SAW a people trampled on, oppressed,
- With helpless hands, and eyes of light afraid,
- With aching shoulders whereon burdens laid
- By day and night choked hope and murdered rest;
- A people sordid, sad, unloved, unblessed,
- Whose shroud by their own hands was ever made,
- Whose never‐ending toil was only paid
- By death‐in‐life—or death, of life’s gifts best.
- ‘What help,’ I cried, ‘for these whose hands are weak—
- Too weak to hold the weapons they should wield;
- Too weak to grasp a helping hand, or seek
- With armed battalions to dispute the field,
- And on the oppressors just revenge to wreak?’
- Then—as I cried—the helper was revealed.
