Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/209

 Their eyes are orbs of dullest fire, As if the flame would mount up higher; But in the darkness of their glow We know the fuel's burning low.

Such looks, O gods, are not from thee! No, they're the stares of misery! They speak of hunger's frightful hold On lips a-dry and stomachs cold.

"Bread, bread," they cry, these weary men, With wives and children from the glen! O, they would toil the live-long day But for a meal, their lives to stay.

But where is it in all the land? Unless the gods with gen'rous hand Send sweetsome rice and strength'ning corn To these vast crowds to hunger born!

The Right to be Lazy

(A well-known Socialist writer of France. He and his wife, finding themselves helpless from old age and penury, committed suicide together)

Does any one believe that, because the toilers of the time of the mediæval guilds worked five days out of seven in a week, they lived upon air and water only, as the deluding political economists tell us? Go to! They had leisure to taste of earthly pleasure, to cherish love, to make and to keep open house in honor of the great God, Leisure. In those days, that morose, hypo