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Home  »  The Poetical Works In Four Volumes  »  The Poor Voter on Election Day

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Songs of Labor and Reform

The Poor Voter on Election Day

THE PROUDEST now is but my peer,

The highest not more high;

To-day, of all the weary year,

A king of men am I.

To-day, alike are great and small,

The nameless and the known;

My palace is the people’s hall,

The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list

Beside the served shall stand;

Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,

The gloved and dainty hand!

The rich is level with the poor,

The weak is strong to-day;

And sleekest broadcloth counts no more

Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence

My stubborn right abide;

I set a plain man’s common sense

Against the pedant’s pride.

To-day shall simple manhood try

The strength of gold and land;

The wide world has not wealth to buy

The power in my right hand!

While there ’s a grief to seek redress,

Or balance to adjust,

Where weighs our living manhood less

Than Mammon’s vilest dust,—

While there ’s a right to need my vote,

A wrong to sweep away,

Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!

A man ’s a man to-day!

1848.