Let them guard both hall and bower; Through the window you will glower, Patient till your reckoning hour Shall be tolled: Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, Guiltless blood may chance be shed, But ye must and will be fed, Hunger and Cold!
God has plans man must not spoil, Some were made to starve and toil, Some to share the wine and oil, We are told: Devil's theories are these, Stifling hope and love and peace, Framed your hideous lusts to please, Hunger and Cold!
Scatter ashes on thy head, Tears of burning sorrow shed, Earth! and be by pity led To Love's fold; Ere they block the very door With lean corpses of the poor, And will hush for naught but gore,-- Hunger and Cold!
What boot your houses and your lands? In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, Like water, 'twixt your cheated hands, They slip into the graveyard's sands And mock your ownership's pretence.
How shall you speak to urge your right, Choked with that soil for which you lust The bit of clay, for whose delight You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might Foreclose this very day in dust.
Fence as you please, this plain poor man, Whose only fields are in his wit, Who shapes the world, as best he can, According to God's higher plan, Owns you and fences as is fit.
Though yours the rents, his incomes wax By right of eminent domain; From factory tall to woodman's axe, All things on earth must pay their tax, To feed his hungry heart and brain.
He takes you from your easy-chair, And what he plans, that you must do. You sleep in down, eat dainty fare,-- He mounts his crazy garret-stair And starves, the landlord over you.
Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil.
Your lands, with force or cunning got, Shrink to the measure of the grave; But Death himself abridges not The tenures of almighty thought, The titles of the wise and brave.
Far up on Katahdin thou towerest, Purple-blue with the distance and vast; Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest, That hangs poised on a lull in the blast, To its fall leaning awful.
In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches, When whole mountains swoop valeward.