See, lovers, wed at tender eve;
  See, mothers, with your new-born young;
See, fathers—­if you can, believe;
  From infant blood, lo, wealth is wrung! 
See homes; see towns; see cities; states;
  Earth, show it to the skies above! 
Lovers who pass through rapture’s gates,
  Are these, are these your fruits of love?

O man who boast your lands subdued,
  Your conquered air, your oceans tamed,
Who mold all nature to your mood,
  Look on these babes and be ashamed! 
Dull looks from out each weary face,
  Cold words upon each little tongue—­
Dead lives that know not childhoods grace,
  Grown old before they can be young.

Hear, world of Mammon, brutal, bold,
  Goring with life the maw of greed,
Measuring everything by gold;
  The good deed with the evil deed—­
The pangs of suffering childhoods care,
  Now coined in coins to fill a purse,
These things shall haunt you everywhere,
  And rest upon you for a curse!

=The Hymn of Labor=

The world was made with labor: 
    Strong fusing air and fire
Strove before the years of birth,
    With awful deed and dire,
And wrought from primal chaos
    Amidst the ancient night. 
The seas and shores which are the earth,
    And shapes of morning light.

Yea, bound in frenzied orbits,
    The solar substance sped
With travail of the moon and stars,
    And planets live and dead;
And wombed and birthed in anguish,
    As heirs of all its toil,
Earth’s vale and hill and ribs of rock,
    And the rivers in her soil.

Life was formed by labor: 
    From out of the bubbling ooze. 
By cosmic ferment molded well,
    And tropic suns and dews,
With stress of chemic struggle
    Were built with warding care
The potent powers of earth and sea,
    And the wings of all the air. 
Yea, through the mystic process
    Of crystallizing form,
To green growths sprung across the land,
    And bloods of cold and warm,
The vital stream of being
    In flooding efforts swirled,
And beast and bird and swimming fish
    Made animate the world.

Man was wrought by labor: 
    Fierce things of growth and might,
Where waring species hold their sway,
    Keen eared and clear of sight. 
Toiled in craft and cunning
    And strength of ripening brain,
Till rose the form that grasped the world
    And made it his domain.

Yea, with red feud and ravage
    Of saber tooth and claw. 
With banding of the pack for might
    And filled or starving maw;
From floundering saurians welter,
    Through grin and screech of ape,
Struggled the deathless seed of life
    Up to human shape.

And man hath made with labor: 
    From his wild primal hour,
Potent with transforming deeds. 
    He hath wed will to power;
Through war and peace untiring,
    To industry and art,
Spending the might of all his thought
    And the hope of all his heart.