Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/233

 A South-Sea Islander

(English poet and rebel, 1862-1893; his life, a brief struggle with poverty and disease, was ended by his own hand)

Aloll in the warm clear water, On her back with languorous limbs She lies. The baby upon her breast Paddles and falls and swims.

With half-closed eyes she smiles, Guarding it with her hands; And the sob swells up in my heart— In my heart that understands.

''Dear, in the English country, The hatefullest land on earth, The mothers are starved and the children die And death is better than birth!''

Out of the Dark

(America's most famous blind girl, born 1880, who has come to see more than most people with normal eyes)

Step by step my investigation of blindness led me into the industrial world. And what a world it is! I must face unflinchingly a world of facts—a world of misery and degradation, of blindness, crookedness, and sin, a world struggling against the elements, against the