Tell me not, in doctored numbers, <br />Life is but a name for work! <br />For the labour that encumbers <br />Me I wish that I could shirk. <br /> <br />Life is phony! Life is rotten! <br />And the wealthy have no soul; <br />Why should you be picking cotton, <br />Why should I be mining coal? <br /> <br />Not employment and not sorrow <br />Is my destined end or way; <br />But to act that each tomorrow <br />Finds me idler than today. <br /> <br />Work is long, and plutes are lunching; <br />Money is the thing I crave; <br />But my heart continues punching <br />Funeral time-clocks to the grave. <br /> <br />In the world's uneven battle, <br />In the swindle known as life, <br />Be not like the stockyard's cattle-- <br />Stick your partner with the knife! <br /> <br />Trust no boss, however pleasant! <br />Capital is but a curse! <br />Strike,--strike in the living present! <br />Fill, oh fill the bulging purse.! <br /> <br />Lives of strikers all remind us <br />We can make our lives a crime, <br />And, departing, leave behind us <br />Bills for double overtime. <br /> <br />Charges that, perhaps another, <br />Working for a stingy ten <br />Bucks a day, some mining brother <br />Seeing, shall walk out again. <br /> <br />Let us, then, be up and striking, <br />Discontent with all of it; <br />Still undoing, still disliking, <br />Learn to labour--and to quit.<br /><br />Franklin P. Adams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-psalm-of-labouring-life/
