Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.
A ConsecrationMasefield, John
John Masefield
(An English poet who has had a varied career as sailor, laborer and even bartender upon the Bowery, New York. Born 1873, his narrative poems of humble life made him famous almost over night)N
Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years,
Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with the spears;
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,
The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.
Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown,
But the lads who carried the koppie and cannot be known.
The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,
The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.
The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,
The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout.
The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;—
Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!
Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—