Classic Poem

There is a scent on the books of dead men's bones,
And a spatter of blood over all;
There's a rough, ragged hole in each leaf you turn,
Like the wound from a rifleman's ball.

There's the last gasp of men shot down at command
Of this gracious and generous man;
There's the blood and groan, the grief and the sham—
You picture it, any who can.

There's a picture of Homestead—will we ever forget
How those brave ragged men were defenselessly slain—
Were slaughtered like beasts, like poor hunted beasts,
By Carnegie's will and for Carnegie's gain?

Will we ever forget how their mothers and wives
In their rags and their woe knelt down in the dust,
And clasped their dear dead then, just as they fell
By riflemen's ball and bayonet's thrust?

Will we ever forget how the press of the land
Made light of the slaughter by saying: The dead
Were foreign-born men, who, in impudence, asked
For the right to living and earning their bread?

Will we ever forget how, in sweatshop and mine,
The fathers and mothers and children are slain?
How virtue is bartered and childhood is crushed
By Carnegie's will and for Carnegie's gain?

How the skeleton babes, the milkless breast
Give their poor little lives to his greed?
How the girls on the street and the mothers in rags
Are reflecting his generous deed?

And this is his gift, all shining with blood,
The gift that he proffers with arrogant hand;
This is the penance for murder and lust;
This is his jest to the slaves of the land.

But the books are not dumb; they have eloquent tongues
To tell you their pitiful story—
How the bodies and souls of women and men
Have built him his temple of glory.

How the walls are of bones cemented with blood,
And wet the dropping of tears;
Of hearts that have broken for wrongs unwritten
These hundreds and hundreds of years.

For these wrongs to our comrades we'll never forget,
Nor this master of bread, with his cunning and greed.
And the gift that he proffers—we spurn it and scorn him,
For we hold it in keeping with his class and deed.