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48 THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF |
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We have ploughed, we have sown But the crop was not our own; We have reaped, but harpy hands Swept the harvest from our lands; We were perishing for food, • When lo ! in pitying mood Our kindly rulers gave The fat fluid of the slave, While our corn filled the manger Of the war-house of the stranger ! God of mercy ! must this last ?
Is this land preordained, For the present and the past
And the future, to be chained,— To be ravaged, to be drained, To be robbed, to be spoiled, To be hushed, to be whipt, Its soaring pinions dipt, And its every effort foiled ?
Do our numbers multiply
But to perish and to die ? Is this all our destiny below,—
That our bodies, as they rot,
May fertilize the spot Where the harvest of the stranger grow ?
If this be, indeed, our fate,
Far, far better now, though late, That we seek some other land and try some other zone;
The coldest, bleakest shore
Will surely yield us more Than the storehouse of the stranger that we dare not call our own. |
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