In the days of the years we dwell in

In the days of the years we dwell in, that wear our lives away? Why, then, and for what are we waiting? There are three words to speak; WE WILL IT, and what is the foeman but the dream-strong wakened and weak?

O why and for what are we waiting? while our brothers droop and die, And on every wind of the heavens a wasted life goes by.

How long shall they reproach us where crowd on crowd they dwell, Poor ghosts of the wicked city, the gold-crushed hungry hell?

Through squalid life they laboured, in sordid grief they died, Those sons of a mighty mother, those props of England's pride.

They are gone; there is none can undo it, nor save our souls from the curse; But many a million cometh, and shall they be better or worse?

It is we must answer and hasten, and open wide the door For the rich man's hurrying terror, and the slow-foot hope of the poor.

Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched, and their unlearned discontent, We must give it voice and wisdom till the waiting-tide be spent.