As if to show me their sunny backs,
And twit me with the spring.

"O, but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet!
For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

"O, but for one short hour,
A respite, however brief!

No blessed leisure for love or hope,
But only time for grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart;
But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread, --

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the rich! She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

The following verse appears in the original MS. of the "Song of the Shirt."

Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Work-work — work,

Like the engine that works by steam!
A mere machine of iron and wood,
That toils for Mammon's sake,
Without a brain to ponder and craze,
Or a heart to feel - and break!

THE LAY OF THE LABORER.

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 swath 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 ye will,

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 a 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.