The Workingman

This poem was written by Ellen Murray, a co-founder of the Penn School on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. The poem was originally published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on January 30, 1864.

The workingman of Lancashire
Came later home that night;
His babes had cried themselves to sleep,
His young wife's cheek was white;
The scanty meal had failed that day;
She looked up in his face,
As if in his frank, honest eyes
A ray of hope to trace.

He sat down by the fireless hearth,
She leant her close beside;
He said: "Dear wife, the livelong day
I hunted far and wide;
Each factory door was closed; I begged
An hour's work in vain;
I could not bear to seek my home
And hear my babes complain.

"Weary and hungry, as I sat
Beside a lighted hall,
A comrade bade me enter in;
'Twas meant, he thought, for all
The workingmen to speak their minds
And get their wrongs redressed.
''Tis wrong,' said I, 'that we should starve.'
I went in with the rest.

"One stood upon the platform there,
And told us how we might
In one great cry for work and bread
Our thousand tongues unite.
Our England's Parliament would hear,
Our English Queen would heed,
For never yet her royal heart
Disdained her people's need.

"Our war-ships, with their hundred guns,
Would rake the western shore,
Drive back the Northerners, and bring
The bales of cotton o'er;
Our factory doors would open wide
With work and wages high;
I thought how glad my babes would be,
As if relief were nigh.

"But then another rose to speak;
You know, my wife, the slaves!
We've often talked of how they wished
Their children in their graves,
And thought how hard 'twould be for us
To part with Robbie there,
Or our small Jennie, so like you
In sunny eyes and hair.

"This speaker told us how, where'er
The Northern army went,
They broke the fetters from the slave,
Telling what freedom meant,
And how those slaves looked up in prayer,
Blessing our dear Lord's name
That to them, in His own good time,
This 'blessed Union' came.

"How Northern teachers into schools
The little ones have brought,
To learn the same most Holy Book
Our own dear ones are taught;
The men go out to till the fields
Gladly, as freemen may,
And mothers o'er their babes rejoice
Throughout the summer day.

"But should the North be driven back,
God help those freedmen then!
For their sake would we bear our lot,
Silent, as Christian men?
His voice grew lower as he spoke:
"I know 'tis hard to bear,
But—think of Jesus on the cross,
For others died He there!'

"So, wife, I stood up in my place
And shouted, 'Aye, we will!'
The 'ayes' of our brave working men
They seemed the roof to thrill;
We shouted it again, again,
It was a glorious night—
But, when I came to this bare house, —
Dear wife, did I do right?"

"Most surely, right," she said, yet turned
With hidden tears away,
Murmuring—"God, give my little ones
Their bread from day to day."
And many such staunch working men
Went hungry home that night,
And thanked God he had strengthened them
To suffer for the right.

The working men of Lancashire!
Their great self-sacrifice Those, for whose sake 'twas undergone,
Will never know or prize;
Only when freedmen kneel at dawn
And bless their friends in prayer,
They bless the noble working men Of England, unaware.
Ellen Murray