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| BROTHERS, my brothers—you that are free | |
| In the golden lands, beyond the sea, | |
| Are you blind that you do not heed the scars | |
| Of my futile hands as they beat the bars? | |
| Are you deaf that you do not heed the cry | 5 |
| Of the Little People who will not die? | |
| Who will not die though with fear | |
| Without their Ghetto walls. Ah, hear | |
| The anguished cry of the mother of sons | |
| Who are spat on thus by the lordly ones: | 10 |
| “Ye may not labor. Ye have no goal. | |
| Back to your hovels! Herd as the swine! | |
| Be eaten with fear to your very soul!” | |
| This is the birth of the coward’s whine. | |
| Brothers, my brothers, the days are long | 15 |
| For the wretched one who does no wrong, | |
| But to live through beggary, misery—aye | |
| Worse than these—a Jew till he die. | |
| For he sucked, with the milk at his mother’s breast, | |
| Patient for scorn and patient for jest, | 20 |
| Wounds of the body and wounds of the soul | |
| Till a day when the Lord God made him whole | |
| The shining day he will bless the pain | |
| That has brought the Jew to his own again. | |
| He will bless the pain. But brothers mine | 25 |
| Easy for you not to herd as swine; | |
| Prosperous, florishing—kith and kin, | |
| Easy for you to stay clean within. | |
| But, O my Brothers beyond the sea, | |
| The days are long and bitter for me. | 30 |
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