It is something in this darker dream demented

Strove to make all the slaves of one,With Nobles and with Churchmen youHad stood unflinching, pure and true,To annihilate that hateful thingGreen Runnymede beat out of John?Had you lived when a wanton crew,Flash scoundrels of a day outdone,Trod down the toilers birth derides,With Cromwell and his IronsidesThe brave days had discovered you,Where Naseby saw the…

We walked and talked together. O her taleWas very common; thousands know it all!‘Seduced’; a gentleman; a baby coming;Parents that railed; London; the child born dead;A seamstress then, one of some fifty girls‘Taken on’ a few months at a dressmaker’sIn the crush of the ‘season’ at ten shillings a week!The fashionable people’s dresses done,And they…

If he have not my purse instead,The robber!’‘He, with the lash of wealth and power,Flogs out my heart and flings the dower,The sneering pittance of his hour,The robber!’‘He shakes his serpent tongue that lies,Wins trust for poisoned sophistries,And stabs me in the dark, and flies,The assassin!’‘He pits me in the dreadful fightAgainst my fellow. Then…

From sunrise on to sunset, till the mill,That grinds in flour my heart and soul, is still,And the ropes are loosed, and I may leave my courseAnd silent, alone with the night, go backTo misery and the cruel sleep whose breasts,Bitter to suck, give poisoned milk. And thisIs my life! And everything attestsHell’s fleshless hand…

O CITY lapped in sun and Sabbath rest,With happy face of plenteous ease possessed,Have you no doubts that whisper, dreams that moanDisquietude, to stir your slumbering breast?Think you the sins of other climes are gone?The harlot’s curse rings in your streets — the groanOf out-worn men, the stabbed and plundered slavesOf ever-growing Greed, these are…

Let him whom sweats annoy,No more be spoiling.For we would have it beThat, weak or stronger,Not he who works, but heWho works not, hunger!