How near to the goal are we now, and what shall we live to behold?
Will it come a day of surprise to the best of the hopeful and bold?
Shall the sun arise some morning and see men falling to work, Smiling and loving their lives, not fearing the ill that may lurk In every house on their road, in the very ground that they tread?
Shall the sun see famine slain, and the fear of children dead?
Shall he look adown on men set free from the burden of care, And the earth grown like to himself, so comely, clean and fair?
Or else will it linger and loiter, till hope deferred hath spoiled All bloom of the life of man--yea, the day for which we have toiled?
Till our hearts be turned to stone by the griefs that we have borne, And our loving kindness seared by love from our anguish torn.
Till our hope grow a wrathful fire, and the light of the second birth Be a flame to burn up the weeds from the lean impoverished earth.
What's this? Meseems it was but a little while ago When the merest sparkle of hope set all my heart aglow!
The hope of the day was enough; but now 'tis the very day That wearies my hope with longing. What's changed or gone away?
Or what is it drags at my heart-strings?--is it aught save the coward's fear?
In this little room where I sit is all that I hold most dear -My love, and the love we have fashioned, my wife and the little lad.
Yet the four walls look upon us with other eyes than they had, For indeed a thing hath happened. Last week at my craft I worked, Lest oft in the grey of the morning my heart should tell me I shirked;But to-day I work for us three, lest he and she and IIn the mud of the street should draggle till we come to the workhouse or die.
Not long to tell is the story, for, as I told you before, A lawyer paid me the money which came from my father's store.
Well, now the lawyer is dead, and a curious tangle of theft, It seems, is what he has lived by, and none of my money is left.
So I who have worked for my pleasure now work for utter need:
In "the noble army of labour" I now am a soldier indeed.
"You are young, you belong to the class that you love," saith the rich man's sneer;"Work on with your class and be thankful." All that I hearken to hear, Nor heed the laughter much; have patience a little while, I will tell you what's in my heart, nor hide a jot by guile.
When I worked pretty much for my pleasure I really worked with a will, It was well and workmanlike done, and my fellows knew my skill, And deemed me one of themselves though they called me gentleman Dick, Since they knew I had some money; but now that to work I must stick, Or fall into utter ruin, there's something gone, I find;The work goes, cleared is the job, but there's something left behind;I take up fear with my chisel, fear lies 'twixt me and my plane, And I wake in the merry morning to a new unwonted pain.
That's fear: I shall live it down--and many a thing besides Till I win the poor dulled heart which the workman's jacket hides.
Were it not for the Hope of Hopes I know my journey's end, And would wish I had ne'er been born the weary way to wend.
Now further, well you may think we have lived no gentleman's life, My wife is my servant, and I am the servant of my wife, And we make no work for each other; but country folk we were, And she sickened sore for the grass and the breath of the fragrant air That had made her lovely and strong; and so up here we came To the northern slopes of the town to live with a country dame, Who can talk of the field-folks' ways: not one of the newest the house, The woodwork worn to the bone, its panels the land of the mouse, Its windows rattling and loose, its floors all up and down;But this at least it was, just a cottage left in the town.
There might you sit in our parlour in the Sunday afternoon And watch the sun through the vine-leaves and fall to dreaming that soon You would see the grey team passing, their fetlocks wet with the brook, Or the shining mountainous straw-load: there the summer moon would look Through the leaves on the lampless room, wherein we sat we twain, All London vanished away; and the morn of the summer rain Would waft us the scent of the hay; or the first faint yellow leaves Would flutter adown before us and tell of the acres of sheaves.
