The Old-Time Wail
An Associated Press despatch describe the utterance of a Banners’ Alliance meeting in Kansas as consisting mostly of “the old-time wail of distress.”
Still Dives hath no peace. Broken his slumber,
His feasts are troubled, and his pleasures fail;
For still he hears from voices without number
The same old wail.
They gather yet in field and town and city,—
The people, discontented, bitter, pale,—
And murmur of oppression, pain, and pity,—
The old-time wail.
And weary Dives, jaded in his pleasures,
Finding the endless clamor tiresome, stale—
Would gladly give a part of his wide treasures
To quiet that old wail.
Old? Yes, as old as Egypt. Sounding lowly
From naked millions, in the desert hid,
Starving and bleeding while they builded, slowly,
The Pharaohs’ pyramid.
As old as Rome. That endless empire’s minions
Raised ever and again the same dull cry;
And even Cæsar’s eagle bent his pinions
While it disturbed the sky.
As old as the Dark Ages. The lean peasant,
Numerous, patient, still as time went by
Made his lord’s pastimes something less than pleasant
With that unceasing cry.
It grew in volume down the crowding ages;
Unheeded still, and unappeased, it swelled.
And now it pleads in vain, and now it rages—
The answer still withheld.
A century ago it shrieked and clamored
Till trembled emperors and kings grew pale;
At gates of palaces it roared and hammered,—
The same old wail.
It got no final answer, though its passion
Altered the face of Europe, monarchs slew;
But ere it sank to silence, in some fashion
Others were wailing, too.
And now in broad America we hear it,—
From crowded street, from boundless hill and vale.
Hear, Dives! Have ye not some cause to fear it,—
This old-time wail?
Louder, my brother! Let us wail no longer
Like those past sufferers whose hearts did break.
We are a wiser race, a braver, stronger—
Let us not ask, but take!
So Dives shall have no distress soever,
No sound of anguished voice by land or sea;
The old-time wail shall so be stilled forever,
And Dives shall not be!