We have heard of the happy forests
Where the gurgling streamlets play,
And the merry flowers listen
To the song of the birds all day ;
But for us, in our homes in slumland,
What beauty is there at all,
Where the very skies above us
Are black with the smoke's cursed pall ?
We know there are some with leisure,
Who roam where the world is sweet,
But we to our factory prisons
Are chained by the hands and feet ;
For the cry of our babes is sounding
Forever within our ears,
And we toil for the bread to feed them,
With a toil that is full of fears.
We built the homes of our masters,
Where always at ease they dwell ;
And the sound of music greets them,
'Midst the comfort they love so well ;
But we know that their ease is builded
On the hunger and pain we bear,
Their pleasure upon our toiling,
Their hope upon our despair.
The song ol the merry springtide
Is sweet to them indeed,
These wealthy whom we are clothing,
Whose little ones we feed ;
But to us is the sun a furnace,
The spring but a scorching hell,
The sky but a burning cauldron,
And life but a prison cell.
But the time will come when the beauties
Of earth shall be for all,
When none on his brother's slavehood
Shall base his freedom from thrall,
When the spring shall bring us gladness,
And pleasure in place of pain,
To us who have toiled and sorrowed,
Nor tasted our toiling's gain !
--Fred. Henderson.
Notes
From the Queensland Newspaper The Worker 5 Nov 1930 p. 3.
Protest songs like this were common in the 1930s Great Depression which became a time when the Australian Labour movement was gathering the organised strength to demand better conditions.
Top