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| MEN of England, Heirs of Glory, | |
| Heroes of unwritten story, | |
| Nurslings of one mighty mother, | |
| Hopes of her, and one another! | |
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| Rise, like lions after slumber, | 5 |
| In unvanquishable number, | |
| Shake your chains to earth like dew, | |
| Which in sleep had fall’n on you. | |
| Ye are many, they are few. | |
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| What is Freedom! Ye can tell | 10 |
| That which Slavery is too well, | |
| For its very name has grown | |
| To an echo of your own. | |
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| ’Tis to work, and have such pay | |
| As just keeps life from day to day | 15 |
| In your limbs as in a cell | |
| For the tyrants’ use to dwell: | |
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| So that ye for them are made, | |
| Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade; | |
| With or without your own will, bent | 20 |
| To their defence and nourishment. | |
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| ’Tis to see your children weak | |
| With their mothers pine and peak, | |
| When the winter winds are bleak:— | |
| They are dying whilst I speak. | 25 |
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| ’Tis to hunger for such diet | |
| As the rich man in his riot | |
| Casts to the fat dogs that lie | |
| Surfeiting beneath his eye. | |
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| ’Tis to be a slave in soul, | 30 |
| And to hold no strong control | |
| Over your own wills, but be | |
| All that others make of ye. | |
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