Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/48

42 Insects and vermin, ye, the starving and dangerous myriads, List to the murmur that grows and growls! Come from your mines and mills, Pale-faced girls and women with ragged and hard-eyed children, Pour from your dens of toil and filth, out to the air of heaven— Breathe it deep, and hearken! A Cry from the cloud or beyond it, A Cry to the toilers to rise, to be high as the highest that rules them, To own the earth in their lifetime and hand it down to their children!

Emperors, stand to the bar! Chancellors, halt at the barracks! Landlords and Lawlords and Tradelords, the spectres you conjured have risen—