Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Thomas Hood 1799–1845The Lay of the Laborer
Hood-ThoA
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will,
And here ’s a ready hand
To ply the needful tool,
And skill’d enough, by lessons rough,
In Labor’s rugged school.
To lop or fell the tree,
To lay the swarth on the sultry field,
Or plough the stubborn lea;
The harvest stack to bind,
The wheaten rick to thatch,
And never fear in my pouch to find
The tinder or the match.
My fancies never roam;
The fire I yearn to kindle and burn
Is on the hearth of Home;
Where children huddle and crouch
Through dark long winter days,
Where starving children huddle and crouch,
To see the cheerful rays
A-glowing on the haggard cheek,
And not in the haggard’s blaze!
To parch the fields forlorn,
The rain to flood the meadows with mud,
The blight to blast the corn,
To Him I leave to guide
The bolt in its crooked path,
To strike the miser’s rick, and show
The skies blood-red with wrath.
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will;
The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,
The market-team to drive,
Or mend the fence by the cover side,
And leave the game alive.
And then you need not fear
That I shall snare his worship’s hare,
Or kill his grace’s deer;
Break into his lordship’s house,
To steal the plate so rich;
Or leave the yeoman that had a purse
To welter in a ditch.
Wherever Labor calls,
No job I ’ll shirk of the hardest work,
To shun the workhouse walls;
Where savage laws begrudge
The pauper babe its breath,
And doom a wife to a widow’s life,
Before her partner’s death.
With labor stiff and stark,
By lawful turn my living to earn
Between the light and dark;
My daily bread, and nightly bed,
My bacon and drop of beer—
But all from the hand that holds the land,
And none from the overseer!
No pauper badges for me,
A son of the soil, by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.
No alms I ask, give me my task:
Here are the arm, the leg,
The strength, the sinews of a Man,
To work, and not to beg.
Though doom’d by chance of birth
To dress so mean, and to eat the lean
Instead of the fat of the earth;
To make such humble meals
As honest labor can,
A bone and a crust, with a grace to God,
And little thanks to man!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will;
Whatever the tool to ply,
Here is a willing drudge,
With muscle and limb, and woe to him
Who does their pay begrudge!
Docks labor’s little mite,
Bestows on the poor at the temple-door,
But robb’d them over night.
The very shilling he hop’d to save,
As health and morals fail,
Shall visit me in the New Bastile,
The Spital or the Gaol!