Furnace, and grindstone, spindle, and reel,
Thread, and yarn, and iron, and steel -
Yea, rest and the yet untasted meal-
Gushing, rushing, crushing along,
A very torrent of Man!

Urged by the sighs of sorrow and wrong,
Grown at last to a hurricane strong,

Stop its course who can!

Stop who can its onward course

And irresistible moral force;
O! vain and idle dream!

For surely as men are all akin,
Whether of fair or sable skin,
According to Nature's scheme,

That human movement contains within
A blood-power stronger than steam.

Onward, onward, with hasty feet,

They swarm and westward still-
Masses born to drink and eat,

But starving amidst Whitechapel's meat, And famishing down Cornhill!

Through the Poultry—but still unfed

Christian charity, hang your head! Hungry passing the Street of Bread; Thirsty the Street of Milk;

Ragged- beside the Ludgate mart,
So gorgeous, through mechanic art,
With cotton, and wool, and silk!

At last, before that door
That bears so many a knock
Ere ever it opens to sick or poor,
Like sheep they huddle and flock

And would that all the good and wise
Could see the million of hollow eyes,
With a gleam derived from hope and the skies,
Upturned to the workhouse clock!

O! that the parish powers,
Who regulate labor's hours,
The daily amount of human trial,
Weariness, pain, and self-denial,
Would turn from the artificial dial
That striketh ten or eleven,

And go, for once, by that older one
That stands in the light of Nature's sum,
And takes its time from Heaven!

THE LAY OF THE LABORER.

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

To ply the needful tool,

And skilled enough, by lessons rough,
In Labor's rugged school.

To hedge, or dig the ditch,

To lop or fell the tree,

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
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;
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,

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,

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!

A pickaxe, or a bill!

A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,

A flail, or what will-
ye

The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,

The market-team to drive,

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,
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 the ditch.

Wherever Nature needs,
Wherever Labor calls,

No job I'll shirk of the hardest work,
To shun the workhouse walls;
Where savage laws begrudge

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
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,
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.

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,

Though doomed 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,

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,

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!

Who every weekly score

Docks labor's little mite,

Bestows on the poor at the temple door,

But robbed them over night.
The very shilling he hoped to save,

As health and morals fail,

Shall visit me in the New Bastile
The Spital, or the Gaol!

FAIR INES.

O SAW ye not fair Ines?
She's gone into the west,
To dazzle when the sun is down,
And rob the world of rest: