That throttled Greece and ravaged hapless France,
Hath broke from hell and howls for human blood. 
Lift up thy knotted club, O Hercules! 
Strike swift and sure:  crush down the Hydra’s heads;
Throttle the Numean lion:  strike! nor spare
The monster Geryon or the buzzard-beaks. 
Clean the Augean stables if thou can’st;
But hurl the hundred-headed monster down
Headlong to Hades:  chain him; make thee sure
He shall not burst the bonds of hell again.

To you, O chosen makers of the laws,
The nation looks—­and shall it look in vain? 
Will ye sit idle, or in idle wind
Blow out your zeal, and crack your party whips,
Or drivel dotage, while the crisis cries—­
While all around the dark horizon loom
Clouds thunder-capped that bode a hurricane? 
Sleep ye as slept the “Notables” of France,
While under them an hundred AEtnas hissed
And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the shock? 
Be ye our Hercules—­and Lynceus-eyed: 
Still ye the storm or ere the storm begin—­
Ere “Liberty” take Justice by the throat,
And run moon-mad a Malay murder-muck,
Throttle the “Trusts”, and crush the coils combined
That crack our bones and fatten on our fields. 
Strike down the hissing heads of Anarchy: 
Strike swift and hard, nor parley with the fiend
Mothered of hell and father of all fiends—­
Fell monster with an hundred bloody mouths,
And every mouth an hundred hissing tongues,
And every tongue drips venom from his fangs.

Protect the toiling millions by just laws;
Let honest labor find its sure reward;
Let willing hands find work and honest bread. 
So frame the laws that every honest man
May find his home protected and his craft. 
Let Liberty and Order walk hand in hand
With Justice:  happy Trio! let them rule. 
Put up the bars:  bar out the pauper swarms
Alike from Asia’s huts and Europe’s hives. 
Let charity begin at home.  In vain
Will we bar out the swarms from Europe’s hives
And Asia’s countless lepers, if our ports
Are free to all the products of their hands. 
Put up the bars:  bar out the pauper hordes;
Bar out their products that compete with ours: 
Give honest toil at home an honest chance: 
Build up our own and keep our coin at home. 
In vain our mines pour forth their wealth of gold
And silver, if by every ship it sail
For London, Paris, Birmingham or Berlin.

We have been prodigal.  The days are past When virgin acres wanted willing hands, When fertile empires lay in wilderness Waiting the teeming millions of the world.  Lo where the Indian and the bison roamed—­Lords of the prairies boundless as the sea—­But twenty years ago, behold the change!  Homesteads and hamlets, flocks and lowing herds, Railways and cities, miles of rustling corn, And leagues on leagues of waving fields of gold.