| |
| A SPADE! a rake! a hoe! | |
| A pickaxe, or a bill! | |
| A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, | |
| A flail, or what ye will, | |
| And here ’s a ready hand | 5 |
| To ply the needful tool, | |
| And skill’d enough, by lessons rough, | |
| In Labor’s rugged school. | |
| |
| To hedge, or dig the ditch, | |
| To lop or fell the tree, | 10 |
| To lay the swarth on the sultry field, | |
| Or plough the stubborn lea; | |
| The harvest stack to bind, | |
| The wheaten rick to thatch, | |
| And never fear in my pouch to find | 15 |
| The tinder or the match. | |
| |
| To a flaming barn or farm | |
| My fancies never roam; | |
| The fire I yearn to kindle and burn | |
| Is on the hearth of Home; | 20 |
| Where children huddle and crouch | |
| Through dark long winter days, | |
| Where starving children huddle and crouch, | |
| To see the cheerful rays | |
| A-glowing on the haggard cheek, | 25 |
| And not in the haggard’s blaze! | |
| |
| To Him who sends a drought | |
| To parch the fields forlorn, | |
| The rain to flood the meadows with mud, | |
| The blight to blast the corn, | 30 |
| To Him I leave to guide | |
| The bolt in its crooked path, | |
| To strike the miser’s rick, and show | |
| The skies blood-red with wrath. | |
| |
| A spade! a rake! a hoe! | 35 |
| A pickaxe, or a bill! | |
| A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, | |
| A flail, or what ye will; | |
| The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash, | |
| The market-team to drive, | 40 |
| Or mend the fence by the cover side, | |
| And leave the game alive. | |
| |
| Ay, only give me work, | |
| And then you need not fear | |
| That I shall snare his worship’s hare, | 45 |
| Or kill his grace’s deer; | |
| Break into his lordship’s house, | |
| To steal the plate so rich; | |
| Or leave the yeoman that had a purse | |
| To welter in a ditch. | 50 |
| |
| Wherever Nature needs, | |
| Wherever Labor calls, | |
| No job I ’ll shirk of the hardest work, | |
| To shun the workhouse walls; | |
| Where savage laws begrudge | 55 |
| The pauper babe its breath, | |
| And doom a wife to a widow’s life, | |
| Before her partner’s death. | |
| |
| My only claim is this, | |
| With labor stiff and stark, | 60 |
| By lawful turn my living to earn | |
| Between the light and dark; | |
| My daily bread, and nightly bed, | |
| My bacon and drop of beer— | |
| But all from the hand that holds the land, | 65 |
| And none from the overseer! | |
| |
| No parish money, or loaf, | |
| No pauper badges for me, | |
| A son of the soil, by right of toil | |
| Entitled to my fee. | 70 |
| No alms I ask, give me my task: | |
| Here are the arm, the leg, | |
| The strength, the sinews of a Man, | |
| To work, and not to beg. | |
| |
| Still one of Adam’s heirs, | 75 |
| Though doom’d by chance of birth | |
| To dress so mean, and to eat the lean | |
| Instead of the fat of the earth; | |
| To make such humble meals | |
| As honest labor can, | 80 |
| A bone and a crust, with a grace to God, | |
| And little thanks to man! | |
| |
| A spade! a rake! a hoe! | |
| A pickaxe, or a bill! | |
| A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, | 85 |
| A flail, or what ye will; | |
| Whatever the tool to ply, | |
| Here is a willing drudge, | |
| With muscle and limb, and woe to him | |
| Who does their pay begrudge! | 90 |
| |
| Who every weekly score | |
| Docks labor’s little mite, | |
| Bestows on the poor at the temple-door, | |
| But robb’d them over night. | |
| The very shilling he hop’d to save, | 95 |
| As health and morals fail, | |
| Shall visit me in the New Bastile, | |
| The Spital or the Gaol! | |
| |
