Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/41

 They pulled it out of the ditch in the dark, as a brute is pulled from its lair, The corpse of the navvy, stiff and stark, with the clay on its face and hair.

In Christian lands, with calloused hands, he labored for others' good, In workshop and mill, ditchway and drill, earnest, eager, and rude; Unhappy and gaunt with worry and want, a food to the whims of fate, Hashing it out and booted about at the will of the goodly and great.

To him was applied the scorpion lash, for him the gibe and the goad— The roughcast fool of our moral wash, the rugous wretch of the road. Willing to crawl for a pittance small to the swine of the tinsel sty, Beggared and burst from the very first, he chooses the ditch to die— Go, pick the dead from the sloughy bed, and hide him from mortal eye.

He tramped through the colorless winter land, or swined in the scorching heat, The dry skin hacked on his sapless hands or blistering on his feet; He wallowed in mire unseen, unknown, where your houses of pleasure rise, And hapless, hungry, and chilled to the bone, he builded the edifice.